No one talks about inferiority who’s actually having a dispassionate argument
Let’s do the Klein-Harris again.
Ezra Klein
I think you’ve had two African Americans as guests. I think you need to explore the experience of race in American more and not just see that as identity politics. See that as information that is important to talking about some of things you want to talk about, but also to hearing from some of the people who you’ve now written out of the conversation to hear.
Sam Harris
So this is the kind of thing that I would be tempted to score as bad faith —
Ezra Klein
I’m shocked!
Sam Harris
In someone else, but actually, I think this is a point of confusion, but it is, nonetheless, confusion here.
Your accusation that I’m reasoning on the basis of my tribe here is just false. I mean, I spend, this is the whole game I play, this is my main focus in just constructing my worldview and having conversations with other people. When I’m thinking about things, that are true that stand a chance of being universal, that stand a chance of scaling, these are the kinds of things that are not subordinate to a person’s identity. They’re not the things that will be true by accident of birth, because you happen to have been born in India and are Hindu, right? I mean, this is the problem I have with religious sectarianism. This is the problem I have with nationalism or any other kind of tribalism that can’t possibly scale to a global civilization that’s truly cosmopolitan, where when you’re reasoning among strangers, you have to converge on solutions to problems that work independent of who you happen to be.
Point so utterly missed. Seeing “I think you need to explore the experience of race in American more and not just see that as identity politics” as an “accusation that I’m reasoning on the basis of my tribe” is just so dense, so clueless, so…well, dumb, frankly. It’s just dumb to think that one’s experience doesn’t shape how one thinks and especially what one knows.
Then he says he defends Ayaan Hirsi Ali all the time so obviously he’s no racist god damn it. Oddly enough he doesn’t mention the time he had Maryam Namazie on his podcast and spent two hours trying to bully her into agreeing with him instead of listening to her and having a conversation with her.
Sam Harris
There are so many layers of confusion here. I mean, this is just a, again it’s not just yours, it’s everybody’s. It’s got to be a majority of both our audiences. I want to say something about this notion of what’s at stake here, because in your recent piece you talk about Murray’s focus on the inferiority of blacks.
Ezra Klein
Intellectual inferiority.
Sam Harris
But you also use just inferiority of blacks are inferior as well. Go back and look at the piece.
But this notion of inferiority, I mean, no one talks about inferiority who’s actually having a dispassionate argument on this topic of IQ testing. It absolutely does not map on, I can only, I’m not going to pretend to be a mind reader, but it certainly doesn’t map on to my view of this situation.
I mean, for instance, I would bet my life that my IQ is lower than John von Neumann’s was.
Oh god oh god oh god how does one even try to reason with someone who claims that insisting that black people have “lower IQs” on average is not at all calling them inferior?
Ezra Klein
Two things here. One, when I talk about what Murray says specifically I do use intellectual inferiority. I got the piece out in front of me.
I do think, 100 percent, without doubt, that when we have, in American life, over and over and over again, said that African Americans are intellectually less capable than whites, that has been — yes, that is a way of saying that they are inferior and it has been a way of treating them as if they are inferior. It has been a way of justifying social outcomes that are unbelievably unequal and unfair that have been going on until, I mean, they’re going on in the present day.
Of course it has, just as it has with women.
There’s a lot more after that but I think I’ve had enough.
All this conversation did is further convince me that Sam Harris is a blight on the intellectual landscape.
“When I’m thinking about things, that are true that stand a chance of being universal, that stand a chance of scaling, these are the kinds of things that are not subordinate to a person’s identity.”
How exactly does this work? Does a thing have to be universal for it to be true? Are “non-scalable” subjects off the table? So if the thought crosses one’s mind that “too many unarmed black men are being shot to death by police,” is one supposed to dismiss it because not all black men are being shot? Is that what he means by “scaling?” Yet this is deeply connected to their identity (or rather with their being identified AS) black men. Seems like their continued existance was “subordinated” to their “identity.” Is this therefore too unimportant a topic to discuss? I’m sure one could have a vigorous discussion how this issue affects human well-being and human thriving, or lack thereof.
It seemed to me that, in this podcast, Ezra Klein generously gave Sam Harris one of the biggest opportunities he will ever have to experience growth- by asking Sam to confront his misunderstanding and dismissal of “identity politics”, and asking Sam to look deeply at his own “identity politics”, and by inviting Sam to understand he is not operating from a place of the “universal”. But it also seemed to me that, what is most likely to happen, is that Sam Harris will go home, furiously meditate for five hours until he convinces himself that the “self” does not exist (especially Ezra Klein’s “self”) and then he will come out of his meditative state with his “self” entirely unchanged, and go about his business in a fury again, having instantly reconstructed all the narrative fallacies that sustain his “self”- and he’ll find another “de-platformed” intellectual lightweight to come on his podcast and tell him what a hero he is for waging the most important war of our times: standing up to political correctness.
It sounds like it may come down to: “I don’t want to talk or think about things I wish weren’t true.”
It’s striking how much work Harris gets out of his own personal disinterest. He writes a book that’s centrally about metaethics, and the real crucial issues there he breezes over because metaethics is “boring”. Then it’s off on cheerful flights of at best vaguely relevant stuff that does engage his interest and doesn’t much engage the apparent topic of the book.
He’s not a specialist in intelligence studies, but he’s enough of one – in some moods – to back up Murray’s work and reject his critics’ as politically-motivated trash. But if he’s called on that, he backs up and it’s all about the terrible treatment of Murray – step forward with enough claimed credit to assert it’s unjustified grief, step back whenever he’s supposed to address the refutations of Murray, or when someone brings up the actual context of Murray’s work.
On torture or racial-ish profiling – step forward with the Jack Bauer, Dick Cheney dream script scenario to assert it’s justified, step back as no expert but certainly innocent of bias because hey, he’d be caught in the profiling himself. (It’s like “some of my best friends are suspect!” with one degree less separation.)
I’m getting to think that the success and popularity of Harris – or Micheal Shermer, in a similar vein – comes down to:
1 – Being able to turn a phrase adequately
2 – Having some things to say that enough people are interested in hearing that are nonetheless controversial enough to stick out, and aren’t readily proven wrong (common-sense atheism, common-sense skepticism)
3 – Being white, male, heterosexuals so people are used to giving them platforms easily
and 4 – Saying or doing nothing that would upset the people who look up to them for those reasons
and all despite
5 – Having nothing in their intellectual make-up that makes them question whatever wanders into their heads and looks good-enough – despite the vaunted “skepticism” – which probably makes (4) really easy. And, sadly, (3) means (4) comes even more naturally.
Here, Harris is rubbing our noses in how much he’s confused white privilege with a glorious freedom from all mortal cognitive biases.
Is Sam Harris under the impression that other people actually think to themselves “I believe X because I am black (or Asian, etc.)?” That he is the only one who tries to be fair and objective?
Does he really think that the fact that he has searched his conscience for signs of bias and come up empty means that he therefore, indisputably, free from bias?
Is he really using “one of my best friends is Arabic” as a defense?
Does he really think that there is no middle ground between a cross-burning*, I-hate-every-single-black-person racist, and being absolutely 100% free of all racial biases, conscious or unconscious?
*but, you know, not the “it was a youthful lark and I didn’t mean it in a racist way” kind of cross-burning that Charles Murray did
I still think Ezra Klein was wasting his time, but at least it looks like he came prepared and refused to have the “why are you being so mean to me and denying my obvious correctness” discussion that Harris intended.
Klein:
Regarding Klein’s last sentence: that is, in fact, the reason why Charles Murray even brought up the issue of race and IQ in The Bell Curve. As Klein’s colleague at Vox, Matt Yglesias, explains in this very good piece, Murray’s main policy prescription is “the government should stop trying to help people,” and the race and IQ argument comes up in the context of Murray explaining why it is natural and acceptable for blacks to end up poor and lacking in basic human necessities.
In other words, the implication that Harris is resisting so strongly is exactly the implication that Murray argues, and in fact the only reason that Murray delved into the issue of IQ in the first place!
I’ve been pretty impressed with Ezra Klein. Sam Harris, not so much.
Stuart David @ 2 – Ha! Nail on the head.
Eddie Tabash of CFI gave a talk at the 2015 conference, on Sam Harris and Waking Up (the book) and meditation, observing that whatever SH may say, meditation doesn’t seem to have made him one bit less irascible or otherwise different from the Sam Harris we already knew. Eddie also meditates, because it’s good for mood and similar, but, he said, he’s still the same guy after meditating as he was before, and to all appearances so is Sam Harris. I enjoyed that talk a lot.
It sounds like a very insightful talk. The only thing I can really say about Sam Harris’ obsession with meditation is this: if I was Sam Harris, I’d want a long break from my “self” as often as I could possibly get it too.
Hahaha well said.
I suppose the tragedy of Sam Harris though is that, being Sam Harris, he doesn’t feel that way. It makes me queasy to think of it.
I vaguely recall that Tabash talk, and also a bunch of younger people putting on a panel called “We Are Already Awake”. And of course, precisely none of the content of either….
Some day when I’ve nothing better to do, I’ll have to reread _The End of Faith_, just to see if that Buddhism chapter makes any more sense now that I’ve got a little philosophy under my belt — or even if I can stay awake this time (ironic that Mr. Waking Up puts me to sleep, innit). Anyone know if Harris has walked back his credulity re Rupert Sheldrake and reincarnation?
@JeffEngel
I think one of the most important reasons for Harris et al. to be so popular is that they do not require atheist people to challenge their own beliefs and biases. It’s the “Ready Player One”-version of atheism: the whole world is actually centered around exactly your personality and way of thinking.