Legendary Comedy Duo: Harris and Murray

[TraneWreck]

Harris is a guy that I find incredibly disappointing. I really liked some of the points he made in debates around the peak of the 4 Horsemen Era, but egad, he has disgraced himself since.

This seems to be the bottom, giving a fawning interview to Charles Murray. Here is a great article breaking down the malicious, vapid, unscientific nonsense Murray spews, and adds a little criticism of Harris for just gobbling it up (Link to the interview is in the article):

Asserting that the relatively poorer intellectual performance of racial groups is based on their genes is mistaken theoretically and unfounded empirically; and given the consequences of promulgating the policies that follow from such assertions, it is egregiously wrong morally.

Finally, let us consider Sam Harris and his willingness to endorse Murray’s claims — his decision to suspend the skepticism and tough-mindedness we have come to expect from him. There is a fairly widespread intellectual movement among center-right social theorists and pundits to argue that strong adherence to the scientific method commits us to following human science wherever it goes — and they mean something very specific in this context. They say we must move from hard-nosed science of intelligence and genetics all the way — only if that’s the direction data and logical, unbiased interpretation lead, naturally — to genetically based differences in behavior among races.

https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/20...murray-race-iq-sam-harris-science-free-speech

I get that people can disagree, but Murray's nonsense is to phrenology as Intelligent Design is to creationism: same old ******** dressed up in science-y terminology.

 

[angrysoba]

Did you listen to the actual interview? Harris repeatedly points out that he is not endorsing the theories that Murray is putting forward and is not sure if the research Murray is doing is well-intentioned. He is merely saying that he would rather have such ideas discussed openly rather than closed down by angry no platform mobs on university campuses who threaten violence against him and other academics who merely make troubling claims.

He further says that until recently he only knew Murray by reputation and had always assumed the worst caricatures of him to be true - that he was a peddler of racist pseudoscience - without having bothered to read his books. He says that on having read his books Murray's writing appeared much more careful and unobjectionable than he had asssumed and he wondered what the fuss was about. His decision to give the interview was more of a desire not to be shrieked down and also to apologize for having made up his mind on what he considered to be unfounded malicious character assassinations rather than on a dispassionate assessment of the claims. He expressed certain reservations about certain aspects of the research Murray had done but he does see nothing wrong in principle with "following the science wherever it goes" and why should here be anything wrong with that? After all following the science wherever it goes is the opposite of endorsing phrenology with the former following science and the latter pseudoscience.

Do you or the article have anything to say about the science behind Murray's claims?

 

[TraneWreck]

Did you listen to the actual interview? Harris repeatedly points out that he is not endorsing the theories that Murray is putting forward and is not sure if the research Murray is doing is well-intentioned. He is merely saying that he would rather have such ideas discussed openly rather than closed down by angry no platform mobs on university campuses who threaten violence against him and other academics who merely make troubling claims.

Yeah, that's a cop-out, though. Would he invite a religious person to spew creationist nonsense without actually challenging them in the name of open discourse?

He further says that until recently he only knew Murray by reputation and had always assumed the worst caricatures of him to be true - that he was a peddler of racist pseudoscience - without having bothered to read his books.

I mean, that's who and what he is. The books only validate that, regardless of any high-minded tone they may take.

He says that on having read his books Murray's writing appeared much more careful and unobjectionable than he had asssumed and he wondered what the fuss was about.

And this is what really disappoints me about Harris. He should be smart or curious enough to dig into the science and that unambiguously shows Murray to be a hack.

His decision to give the interview was more of a desire not to be shrieked down and also to apologize for having made up his mind on what he considered to be unfounded malicious character assassinations rather than on a dispassionate assessment of the claims.

He can interview whoever he wants. The criticism is aimed entirely at the lame, coddling nature of the interview and his seeming enthusiasm for Murray - saying that these are just facts, when they really, really aren't.

He expressed certain reservations about certain aspects of the research Murray had done but he does see nothing wrong in principle with "following the science wherever it goes" and why should here be anything wrong with that? After all following the science wherever it goes is the opposite of endorsing phrenology with the former following science and the latter pseudoscience.

1) Leaving a little space to weasel out of criticism is classic Harris.
2) He did not follow the science wherever it went; near as I can tell, he didn't look at the science at all.

Do you or the article have anything to say about the science behind Murray's claims?

Yes, the article is all about those claims. It evaluates them one by one, showing how insanely wrong and malicious they are with reference to current scientific understanding of the topics.

 

[angrysoba]

The article brought up five points. Points one to four the authors broadly agreed with - that there is something that IQ tests measure called g and that it does have a heritability. The authors nitpick these claims but they hardly say that Murray is being pseudoscientific here. In fact, aren't these claims that HAVE stood up in the face of a lot of criticism? I seem to remember that IQ and g are concepts that took a lot of flack and that the tests were argued to be culturally biased. These criticisms seem to have fallen away over the years suggesting that at least some of Murray's contentious claims have become more broadly accepted over the years.

The two of them did discuss the Flynn effect and how the environment can affect IQ tests, but what I remember is that Murray said nutrition and other things have reached an upper limit in its effects given that people are generally much better nourished than they were in say 1948 which is the cited date from which IQ scores have been seen to have improved. They did talk about other possible factors but these have largely been difficult to assess in ways that divide heritability from environment such as numbers of books in the house. Books in the house may be an environmental factor but might also be an indicator of genes if the parents.

But just to repeat my question, did you listen to the podcast?

 

[TraneWreck]

The article brought up five points. Points one to four the authors broadly agreed with - that there is something that IQ tests measure called g and that it does have a heritability. The authors nitpick these claims but they hardly say that Murray is being pseudoscientific here.

Stop, man, you're too good for this. They aren't nitpicking, they are very thoroughly and logically explaining where and how Murray goes wrong. This is to stop the sort of weasely nonsense that you go on to repeat.

In fact, aren't these claims that HAVE stood up in the face of a lot of criticism? I seem to remember that IQ and g are concepts that took a lot of flack and that the tests were argued to be culturally biased. These criticisms seem to have fallen away over the years suggesting that at least some of Murray's contentious claims have become more broadly accepted over the years.

This is flatly false. The criticisms have gotten stronger over time.

So, for one thing you're relying on the same shifty, unclear definition of g that Murray uses:

But observing that some people have greater cognitive ability than others is one thing; assuming that this is because of some biologically based, essential inner quality called g that causes them to be smarter, as Murray claims, is another. There is a vibrant ongoing debate about the biological reality of g, but intelligence tests can be meaningful and useful even if an essential inner g doesn’t exist at all. Good thinkers do well at lots of things, so a test that measures quality of thinking is a good predictor of life outcomes, including how well a person does in school, how well she performs in her job, even how long she lives.

And this was under the point that the authors found Murray closest to repeating the best supported scientific view.

The two of them did discuss the Flynn effect and how the environment can affect IQ tests, but what I remember is that Murray said nutrition and other things have reached an upper limit in its effects given that people are generally much better nourished than they were in say 1948 which is the cited date from which IQ scores have been seen to have improved. They did talk about other possible factors but these have largely been difficult to assess in ways that divide heritability from environment such as numbers of books in the house. Books in the house may be an environmental factor but might also be an indicator of genes if the parents.

Yeah, that was an absolutely embarrassing effort by Murray.

But notice what Murray just acknowledged: nutrition has an effect on IQ. Ok, well, do you think, then, that maybe groups that are poorer and have less access to health care and nutrition may have lower IQ scores because of that?

But feel free to provide the evidence linking nutrition to IQ score. It will be amusing, because the extent to which you are able to validate the claim will be the extent to which you undermine Murray's thesis.

But just to repeat my question, did you listen to the podcast?

Did you read the article? I can see you skimmed over it, but you're just repeating points that are dealt with directly.

But to answer yours, no, I did not listen to all 2 1/2 goddamn hours. I listened to Harris' defense of the Bell Curve as dispassionate science and listened to about 40min of the back and forth. Feel free to direct me to a portion that you think undermines any of the argument in the article I linked.

The Bell Curve is a malicious bit of racism that was destroyed 20 years ago and the criticisms have only become stronger since.

 

[TraneWreck]

Sadly not surprised that it needs to be done, but here are a list of very good criticisms of Murray's work:

Disturbing as I find the anachronism of The Bell Curve, I am even more distressed by its pervasive disingenuousness. The authors omit facts, misuse statistical methods, and seem unwilling to admit the consequences of their own words. (p. 6)

The Bell Curve is a strange work. Some of the analysis and a good deal of the tone are reasonable. Yet the science in the book was questionable when it was proposed a century ago, and it has now been completely supplanted by the development of the cognitive sciences and neurosciences. The policy recommendations of the book are also exotic, neither following from the analyses nor justified on their own. (p. 61)

The publicity barrage with which the book was launched might suggest that The Bell Curve has something new to say; it doesn't. The authors, in this most recent eruption of the crude biological determinism that permeates the history of IQ testing, assert that scientific evidence demonstrates the existence of genetically determined differences in intelligence among social classes and races. They cite some 1,OOO references from the social and biological sciences, and make a number of suggestions for changing social policies. The pretense is made that there is some logical, "scientific" connection between evidence culled from those cited sources and the authors' policy recommendations. Those policies would not be necessary or humane even if the cited evidence were valid. But I want to concentrate on what I regard as two disastrous failings of the book. First, the caliber of the data cited by Herrnstein and Murray is, at many critical points, pathetic and their citations of those weak data are often inaccurate. Second, their failure to distinguish between correlation and causation repeatedly leads Herrnstein and Murray to draw invalid conclusions." (pp 81-82)

http://www.intelltheory.com/bellcurve.shtml

A good deal of research cited in this section of the book was found to have been funded in part by the Pioneer Fund, which was infamous for its advocacy of eugenics.[17] There's really no subtlety to this. Notably, one of the sources cited favorably multiple times was J. Philippe Rushton, a psychologist who claimed "Mongoloids" were the more intelligent "race" (followed by the "Caucasoids" and then the "Negroids") and believed penis size to be inversely correlated with intelligence.[18] Herrnstein and Murray then took a page out of Thomas Malthus' playbook and used this "research" to call for the end of welfare programs that would cause the moochers, looters, and parasites to reproduce at an increasing rate.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve

Happy to provide more.

 

[angrysoba]

Yes. I read the article. You are answering my question with a question instead of an answer. Did you listen to the podcast? This is the third time I have asked. I will assume you have not if you sidestep it again.

Yes, Murray agrees that some environmental factors are present. I don't think he supports the idea that IQ is 100 percent genetic. But there nonetheless is a strong genetic component is his argument. On nutritional grounds poorer groups may indeed have less access to health care and nutrition and consequently may have lower IQs in part due to this. But it doesn't follow from that that nutrition and health care can be the only thing or even the main thing that separates one person's IQ from another's.

In any event, Murray cited a report by the APA called Knowns and Unknowns about Intelligence which he claimed vindicated his research.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence:_Knowns_and_Unknowns

 

[TraneWreck]

Yes. I read the article. You are answering my question with a question instead of an answer. Did you listen to the podcast? This is the third time I have asked. I will assume you have not if you sidestep it again.

Perhaps you should scroll back up then.

Yes, Murray agrees that some environmental factors are present. I don't think he supports the idea that IQ is 100 percent genetic. But there nonetheless is a strong genetic component is his argument. On nutritional grounds poorer groups may indeed have less access to health care and nutrition and consequently may have lower IQs in part due to this. But it doesn't follow from that that nutrition and health care can be the only thing or even the main thing that separates one person's IQ from another's.

...? You are the one who parroted Murray's argument that the shift in IQ from 1948 to the present (which was 2x as large as the gap between average white and average black IQ's) was explicable by access to nutrition. The more factors you find that aren't genetic, the more the Flynn Effect demolishes Murray's *********.

In any event, Murray cited a report by the APA called Knowns and Unknowns about Intelligence which he claimed vindicated his research.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence:_Knowns_and_Unknowns

How did that vindicate him beyond the simple issue of g being something real as opposed to a statistical anomaly? As the article I cited pointed out, being real doesn't mean that g is some essential inner quality. It's not as though Charles Murray invented the concept of g.

 

[angrysoba]

Perhaps you should scroll back up then.



...? You are the one who parroted Murray's argument that the shift in IQ from 1948 to the present (which was 2x as large as the gap between average white and average black IQ's) was explicable by access to nutrition. The more factors you find that aren't genetic, the more the Flynn Effect demolishes Murray's *********.



How did that vindicate him beyond the simple issue of g being something real as opposed to a statistical anomaly? As the article I cited pointed out, being real doesn't mean that g is some essential inner quality. It's not as though Charles Murray invented the concept of g.

Okay, you edited your post. I couldn't know you were doing that while I was replying to you.

The vindication to some extent is that IQ is a heritable quality. This is something that was disputed. There is also a difference between saying that environmental factors play SOME role and that they are the principle determining factors. Is it all about nutrition and health care? Or do genetics play an important part?

 

[TraneWreck]

The vindication to some extent is that IQ is a heritable quality. This is something that was disputed. There is also a difference between saying that environmental factors play SOME role and that they are the principle determining factors. Is it all about nutrition and health care? Or do genetics play an important part?

No, this was not the objection to Murray. I gave you a pretty big list of critics and criticisms. None of them challenged the idea that IQ was heritable. They all questioned the degree to which it was heritable and what that said about group differences. From Gould:

The central fallacy in using the substantial heritability of within-group IQ (among whites, for example) as an explanation of average differences between groups (whites versus blacks, for example) is now well known and acknowledged by all, including Herrnstein and Murray, but deserves a restatement by example. Take a trait that is far more heritable than anyone has ever claimed IQ to be but is politically uncontroversial body height. Suppose that I measure the heights of adult males in a poor Indian village beset with nutritional deprivation, and suppose the average height of adult males is five feet six inches. Heritability within the village is high, which is to say that tall fathers (they may average five feet eight inches) tend to have tall sons, while short fathers (five feet four inches on average) tend to have short sons. But this high heritability within the village does not mean that better nutrition might not raise average height to five feet ten inches in a few generations. Similarly, the well-documented fifteen-point average difference in IQ between blacks and whites in America, with substantial heritability of IQ in family lines within each group, permits no automatic conclusion that truly equal opportunity might notraise the black average enough to equal or surpass the white mean. (p. 5)

The article in the OP likewise recognizes the heritability of intelligence and explains how Murray gets it wrong:

Murray takes the heritability of intelligence as evidence that it is an essential inborn quality, passed in the genes from parents to children with little modification by environmental factors. This interpretation is much too strong — a gross oversimplification. Heritability is not a special property of certain traits that have turned out to be genetic; it is a description of the human condition, according to which we are born with certain biological realities that play out in complex ways in concert with environmental factors, and are affected by chance events throughout our lives.

 

[angrysoba]

No, this was not the objection to Murray. I gave you a pretty big list of critics and criticisms. None of them challenged the idea that IQ was heritable. They all questioned the degree to which it was heritable and what that said about group differences. From Gould:



The article in the OP likewise recognizes the heritability of intelligence and explains how Murray gets it wrong:

Sure. So the question is to what extent heritable and environmental factors interact. Well, we don't exactly know.

 

[TraneWreck]

Sure. So the question is to what extent heritable and environmental factors interact. Well, we don't exactly know.

Which undermines every assertion about race Murray has ever tried to make.

We do know enough to know that arbitrary racial designations do not carry with them meaningful truths about intelligence or IQ.

 

[angrysoba]

Which undermines every assertion about race Murray has ever tried to make.

We do know enough to know that arbitrary racial designations do not carry with them meaningful truths about intelligence or IQ.

I think a question could be posed like this:

Let's say that it is an observable fact that self-identified Ashkenazi Jews and East Asians will get a mean average higher on IQ tests than other groups and that the edge of the bell curve there will also be a higher number of Nobel prize winners than other groups. Could this statistical distribution be explained by:

A) genetic factors alone
B) environmental and cultural factors alone
C) a combination of the two

?

Sam Harris himself says that the research question may answer one way or another, and that would merely be a matter of science. He says that he might wonder why such research would be of interest to someone and also says that there are likely to be suspicious motives behind certain uses of the data but that doesn't change the possibility that certain scientific truths as unwelcome as they may be might exist.

You can call those weasel words if you want, but when you said Harris has "disgraced himself" do you mean that it is disgraceful to even have the discussion? I don't have a problem with discussing the topic at all. Whether or not Murray is right about anything should be a matter of empirical science.

 

[TraneWreck]

I think a question could be posed like this...

No one objects to inquiries of that nature. Again, I linked a bunch of sources that discuss those sorts of inquiries and the OP article cites more.

Sam Harris himself says that the research question may answer one way or another, and that would merely be a matter of science. He says that he might wonder why such research would be of interest to someone and also says that there are likely to be suspicious motives behind certain uses of the data but that doesn't change the possibility that certain scientific truths as unwelcome as they may be might exist.

Another trivial statement that no one disagrees with, but...

You can call those weasel words if you want, but when you said Harris has "disgraced himself" do you mean that it is disgraceful to even have the discussion? I don't have a problem with discussing the topic at all. Whether or not Murray is right about anything should be a matter of empirical science.

Yes, he absolutely disgraced himself over and over again. The disgrace began with his heartfelt plea in defense of Murray. Murray is not chastised because he is a noble truth teller; he is chastised because is a slimy, lying racist. His work is manifestly terrible, and he has rightly been criticized for both his ****** science work and also the fact that he engaged in **** science to promote racist ideas.

My expectation is that if Harris wanted to discuss this topic with Murray, he needed to approach with the same zeal for skepticism and science that he would approach a discussion with a creationist. Time and time again in that interview Harris both let ******** claims and arguments slide and even endorsed very bad science as "just the truth, man."

 

[angrysoba]

No one objects to inquiries of that nature. Again, I linked a bunch of sources that discuss those sorts of inquiries and the OP article cites more.



Another trivial statement that no one disagrees with, but...



Yes, he absolutely disgraced himself over and over again. The disgrace began with his heartfelt plea in defense of Murray. Murray is not chastised because he is a noble truth teller; he is chastised because is a slimy, lying racist. His work is manifestly terrible, and he has rightly been criticized for both his ****** science work and also the fact that he engaged in **** science to promote racist ideas.

My expectation is that if Harris wanted to discuss this topic with Murray, he needed to approach with the same zeal for skepticism and science that he would approach a discussion with a creationist. Time and time again in that interview Harris both let ******** claims and arguments slide and even endorsed very bad science as "just the truth, man."

Then it would certainly help to have someone who knows about the updated research to go on to his podcast and talk about it. You could suggest it to him on Twitter or Facebook. It would be useful to have such a discussion. What it is not useful for and which Harris was deliberately pushing back against is the idea that such discussions are bellowed down with chants of "Racist!" and the physical attacks that accompanied the shut down.

 

[marplots]

The field of behavioral genetics suffers from the legacy, and taint, of eugenics. We are right to be cautious, and we certainly don't want any claims to run past the available science.

That said, it's unfair to paint the field with the broad brush of racism without justification. If we recognize IQ/g is heritable, it's a valid scientific question to ask how and if it follows ethnic groups. To do otherwise is to create an anti-science taboo.

A more recent example is the 2006 discovery of the "warrior gene" - so named because it showed up in a higher proportion in Maori men and was associated with violence and criminality. In the ten years since, the idea has been black-balled and straw-manned because of the same suspicion of agenda-driven bigotry. But there really seems to be a "there" there after all.

No one is claiming "genes are destiny." But we don't react negatively if we find out male pattern baldness or red-green colorblindness has a genetic link. We don't poo-poo science which demonstrates an increased risk of breast cancer. Part of the story is figuring out just how much genes influence higher cognition and behaviors. Autism and schizophrenia are likely to have a genetic component - this isn't a shocker.

Somehow we need to find a way to not throw out the baby with the dirty bathwater. Taboo is not helpful here.

 

[TraneWreck]

Then it would certainly help to have someone who knows about the updated research to go on to his podcast and talk about it. You could suggest it to him on Twitter or Facebook. It would be useful to have such a discussion. What it is not useful for and which Harris was deliberately pushing back against is the idea that such discussions are bellowed down with chants of "Racist!" and the physical attacks that accompanied the shut down.

I mean, don't want to be called a racist, don't fawn all over a notorious racist and engage in unconvincing defenses of his long-debunked ********.

Charles Murray is not a person who has any business around an institution of Higher Education. As I said before, he's barely a step above phrenologists. He falls in the same category of pseudo-scientists as acupuncturists and homeopaths.

If there were physical attacks, those are obviously ridiculous.

 

[TraneWreck]

A more recent example is the 2006 discovery of the "warrior gene" - so named because it showed up in a higher proportion in Maori men and was associated with violence and criminality. In the ten years since, the idea has been black-balled and straw-manned because of the same suspicion of agenda-driven bigotry. But there really seems to be a "there" there after all.

The "Warrior Gene" dates back to the early 90's. I'm curious what makes you think it has any legitimacy.

No one is claiming "genes are destiny." But we don't react negatively if we find out male pattern baldness or red-green colorblindness has a genetic link. We don't poo-poo science which demonstrates an increased risk of breast cancer. Part of the story is figuring out just how much genes influence higher cognition and behaviors. Autism and schizophrenia are likely to have a genetic component - this isn't a shocker.

Again, Charles Murray's critics do not deny that intelligence and IQ are inheritable.

Somehow we need to find a way to not throw out the baby with the dirty bathwater. Taboo is not helpful here.

Charles Murray is the dirty bath water.

 

[angrysoba]

I mean, don't want to be called a racist, don't fawn all over a notorious racist and engage in unconvincing defenses of his long-debunked ********.

Charles Murray is not a person who has any business around an institution of Higher Education. As I said before, he's barely a step above phrenologists. He falls in the same category of pseudo-scientists as acupuncturists and homeopaths.

If there were physical attacks, those are obviously ridiculous.

Yes, a "notorious" racist is someone who is racist by reputation. In the very podcast that you started this thread about he mentions that he turned down the option of being published in a location where Charles Murray himself was being published. He now regrets the idea that he was dissuaded purely on notoriety alone. And the person who was physically attacked at the university was a member of the faculty who was escorting Murray. As far as I am concerned everyone has business at institutes of higher learning and it shouldn't be a matter for you or a rentamob to determine otherwise.

 

[TraneWreck]

Yes, a "notorious" racist is someone who is racist by reputation.

And he earned that reputation by being a very proud, public racist.

In the very podcast that you started this thread about he mentions that he turned down the option of being published in a location where Charles Murray himself was being published. He now regrets the idea that he was dissuaded purely on notoriety alone.

Then he should have done research and he would have had strong reasons.

And the person who was physically attacked at the university was a member of the faculty who was escorting Murray. As far as I am concerned everyone has business at institutes of higher learning and it shouldn't be a matter for you or a rentamob to determine otherwise.

On this, we agree.