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19th May 2017, 10:46 AM | #1 |
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Legendary Comedy Duo: Harris and Murray
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):
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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. |
19th May 2017, 11:19 AM | #2 |
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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? |
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19th May 2017, 11:34 AM | #3 |
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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?
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2) He did not follow the science wherever it went; near as I can tell, he didn't look at the science at all.
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19th May 2017, 12:06 PM | #4 |
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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? |
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19th May 2017, 12:20 PM | #5 |
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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.
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So, for one thing you're relying on the same shifty, unclear definition of g that Murray uses:
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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.
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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. |
19th May 2017, 12:34 PM | #6 |
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Sadly not surprised that it needs to be done, but here are a list of very good criticisms of Murray's work:
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Happy to provide more. |
19th May 2017, 12:37 PM | #7 |
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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/Inte...s_and_Unknowns |
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19th May 2017, 12:44 PM | #8 |
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Perhaps you should scroll back up then.
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19th May 2017, 01:01 PM | #9 |
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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? |
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19th May 2017, 01:05 PM | #10 |
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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:
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19th May 2017, 01:13 PM | #11 |
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19th May 2017, 01:15 PM | #12 |
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19th May 2017, 02:45 PM | #13 |
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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. |
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19th May 2017, 02:54 PM | #14 |
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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.
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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." |
19th May 2017, 03:03 PM | #15 |
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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.
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19th May 2017, 03:29 PM | #16 |
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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. |
19th May 2017, 03:48 PM | #17 |
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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. |
19th May 2017, 03:55 PM | #18 |
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19th May 2017, 03:59 PM | #19 |
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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.
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19th May 2017, 04:01 PM | #20 |
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19th May 2017, 04:13 PM | #21 |
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19th May 2017, 04:19 PM | #22 |
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Well, that does it, then. They deny it? I also heard The Bell Curve's opening line begins, "I'm not racist, but..."
Here's the Southern Poverty Law Center's page on Murray: https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-h...charles-murray His whole game is to dress racism up in science-y sounding stuff. But seriously, you don't see the obvious racism in manipulating survey data to justify a position that black people are born inferior to white people? It's amazing that his racism needs to be explained. And, again, the data does not show this. The scientific research does not show this. Murray made ******** up to justify a racist position. That's literally the only reason anyone knows who he is. |
19th May 2017, 04:32 PM | #23 |
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19th May 2017, 04:38 PM | #24 |
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Duplicate.
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19th May 2017, 04:45 PM | #25 |
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It depends on what you mean by "any"?
The paper I mentioned: https://www.researchgate.net/publica...ene_Hypothesis One from 2009: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2650118/ Some interesting research from 2014: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4776744/
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What bothers me is when racists cherry-pick research to push their own agenda and that then taints the larger subject unfairly. We don't need to undermine the science in service of social justice. I want the truth of the matter - even if it's uncomfortable. |
19th May 2017, 04:47 PM | #26 |
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I haven't read the Bell Curve so I cannot say if it is racist or not, but Wikipedia has two quotes suggesting that the relationship between IQ and race is unresolved and that they suggest both environmental and genetic factors have something to do with it. Is this what sparked the controversy?
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20th May 2017, 05:47 AM | #27 |
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I happened to have just listened to (most of) the podcast today. I didn't find anything particularly objectionable.
I thought Harris did an okay job. He brought up a few important points. For instance he brings up the Flynn affect, and at one point quotes Flynn as saying something along of lines of "You only have to posit that the environment of the average black man today is as conducive to mental development as that of the average white mane in 1948 to demolish the idea that there is a genetic component to the racial differences in IQ" (something like that). Murray dismissed this as though it were ridiculous because he seems to assert that the environmental differences simply aren't large enough. I thought that was the weakest part of his argument. When Harris brings up environmental differences he rightly points out that we can measure at least some aspect of this, but then just basically makes an argument from incredulity saying that it's just inconceivable that the environmental differences could be large enough to explain the measured difference in IQ. Now, maybe he knows more about the research and there are actually valid reasons to think that, but if so he didn't explain them. Nevertheless I didn't get the impression that he had an agenda. I don't know enough about the science here to form a solid opinion, but I do think that it's possible for him to be wrong and think he was right simply on scientific grounds, and i don't think that the issue is so clear cut that only a racist with an agenda could possibly continue to hold the opinions that he holds. My own view is that while, as I say, I'm not sure, I suspect that the differences can be explained by environmental differences. |
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20th May 2017, 06:01 AM | #28 |
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Suprising that the push back took this long to come about as this podcast has been out for a while. I thought Harris should have been more critical in the discussion. Perhaps the feedback from the cluster **** of the podcast with Jordan Peterson, where the discussion completely stalled for 2 hours over the definition of truth was still on his mind. But I don't think Harris would hold back that much. In his podcast with Andrew Sullivan before the election, they ripped into Clinton before making the case against Trump. I think as someone who has been unjustly called a racist, like by Affleck on Real Time, he sympathizes too much with Murray.
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20th May 2017, 06:35 AM | #29 |
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If it comes down to environment there's an explanitory escape clause - improve the environment and race-linked IQ differences disappear. That falls in line with social justice concerns and is an acceptable way forward. If, on the other hand, it comes down to real, demonstrable genetic differences, there's a problem - that's taboo science.
The usual way to placate social justice concerns is to say that race itself is ill-defined, and, coupled with figuring out just what IQ actually measures, the whole subject should be thrown out as junk science. Can it be repaired? I think it can, but have no idea what the results would show. What's needed is a tightening of both definitions - race and IQ. Cognitive scientists have been working on the second and came up with "g" which they argue is both internally and externally consistent. So what about race? Can that be pinned down? It can be, if you just decide our impression of someone's race is misleading and go with a genetic definition instead. That would mean throwing out "self identification" of ethnicity and the kind of social constructs we might want to keep for political purposes, but it has the advantage of a clear definition for purposes of deriving associations - the epidemiology we are interested in. How to pin down race genetically? Well, look at genes of course! Scientists have figured out that lighter skinned East Asians get their skin color mostly from a non-working version of kitlg. Northern European people with lighter skin often have a poorly working version of SLC24A5. A small number of pale northern Europeans get their skin color from a non-working MC1R gene. From: http://genetics.thetech.org/ask/ask288 Granted, that's a pretty shallow definition of what race is all about, but it has the advantage of getting the ball rolling. If we find no correlation with skin color (at least one way we talk about race) then fine, no need to press the case any further - it was all a mirage anyhow. If there is a correlation, then we are back to nature/nurture conversations and have to start separating out those with background A from background B when the genes are the same. This is normal fare in statistical epidemiology. The gold standard would be linking specific genes to g scores with an underlying explanatory theory - in the way you might determine someone's risk for breast cancer knowing how the genes interact. In the end, and even if it all plays out nicely (I'm looking at you, reproducible study!), will we find out anything worth knowing? I seriously doubt it. And all the while we risk feeding oxygen to racists. They are even worse than Creationists when it comes to cherry-picking. |
20th May 2017, 06:38 AM | #30 |
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From your last link:
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He isn't dismissed because people ignored him; he is dismissed because people read him and were horrified at both the racism and the bad science.
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20th May 2017, 06:42 AM | #31 |
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Yes. this is a good summary. And as the article I posted details, Harris gave absolutely MINIMAL effort to the Flynn issue. Even just mentioning it was enough to completely undermine Murray's thesis.
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He found a sympathetic host who didn't bother to do much research and they had a little self-pity party. He doesn't come off as objectionable because both he and Harris worked very hard to hide that aspect of his work. |
20th May 2017, 06:54 AM | #32 |
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I think you were asking for evidence of "any legitimacy," not a conclusion. I'm perfectly happy with "the jury is still out" or "it's not settled science." Association studies are not the best evidence - we'd like a mechanistic study instead. But they offer a way forward, and the root idea seems uncontroversial on it's face: genetics influence phenotype, including "psychotypes."
I propose the science (such that it is) should stand or fall on its own merits without being driven by social policy. In fact, the best pairing is to use the science to direct social policies intelligently. I suppose the question is whether that's even possible or not.
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20th May 2017, 06:59 AM | #33 |
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That's a fair point. These issues are sensitive because people take something like MAOA, find it present in the Maori, and all of a sudden we have people claiming that individuals of a certain background are likely to be more violent.
Both with this and Murray, it's the folks who adopt your position - hey, this is interesting, let's figure out the implications - who are arguing against the racists who think they've found genetic deterministic explanations for why white people are great and everyone else isn't. As for Murray, I linked his SLPC page. The SLPC is the legal organization that figured out how to hold the leaders of the KKK responsible for the crimes of their followers. It is a network dedicated to hate. There's a reason Charles Murray has a page there. |
20th May 2017, 07:41 AM | #34 |
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It's spin though. Here are two descriptions of candidates for a job:
* “A good leader, with strong achievement motivation, fair bargaining behaviors, and social assertiveness.” * “Has low impulse control, aggressive, with a propensity to act out violently.” Both of those fit the behaviors associated with the warrior gene.
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That said, I do think those with a racist agenda have a role. Recall the Creationists with their irreducible complexity bit. I learned something when evolutionary biologists took the time to debunk it. That's a service they provided, and it's similar to the "service" rendered by the race-linked genetic determinists. Finding out why they are wrong is worthwhile. The Flynn Effect is worth knowing about. Maybe a little bunk stimulates a useful immune response. Was Harris too gentle? Too kind? In hindsight I suppose he was. But the topic was worth having on his show. |
20th May 2017, 07:45 AM | #35 |
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I think this is the best analogy. Very similar situations.
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Harris' failings run far deeper than just not providing enough of a skeptical response to Murray's long-debunked nonsense, though that was obviously a problem. |
20th May 2017, 08:54 AM | #36 |
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Yeah, I had a look at that, but again I haven't read the whole thing. I don't really see any smoking gun given that you called Charles Murray a "very proud, public racist". This was in the context of you saying Sam Harris should have found it easy to discover that the notoriety was fully deserved, when I haven't seen evidence that Murray is clearly driven by racism. It may be that he is, but it doesn't seem to be as you characterize him.
The SPLC refer to him as a "White Nationalist". Now, there clearly are White Nationalists who proclaim themselves as such and often wave flags and tattoo themselves in a way that make their allegiance obvious. Charles Murray doesn't appear to do this. I am not saying that he cannot be a racist, but he is not an out and proud racist, unlike your characterization. There are a couple of reasons why Sam Harris himself may be unmoved by the SPLC's page and a reason why Charles Murray's very appearance there is insufficient for him to decide against inviting him on the podcast. One of those is that Sam Harris has himself been labelled a "white supremacist", I believe, by a writer on Salon (I can't find the article right now, but Harris has referenced it before on his podcast). The other is that two of Harris's previous guests also have pages on the SPLC, and one of them he has even co-written a book with. They are Maajid Nawaz (who is an anti-Muslim extremist apparently for compiling data on peaceful Islamists (!) and for tweeting a cartoon of Muhammed (!)), and Ayaan Hirshi Ali (who "says she endured female genital mutilation" - but hey, pics or it didn't happen, I guess, and also says some non-complimentary things about Islam). Of course, Harris also realizes that he's not only courting controversy by having Murray on his podcast but also that he will be called a racist etc... just for having the conversation. He was right. |
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20th May 2017, 09:34 AM | #37 |
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I'd like to see a tally of the warrior gene among cops too, rather than only criminals.
But so far as other comparisons, I think any two groups for comparison would give two bell curves. They would mostly overlap- left side can only go to zero, the right side tapering down toward very small percentages. The big difference would be in the peak of the bell curves. This would be appropriate for say, flavor of apples, texture of gravel, talness vs ability to jump. Anydamnthing. So far as race vs IQ, many current studies show a difference of one SD, 15 IQ points. That would be a comparison to the peak of the bell curves. But that doesn't mean that any particular black man is necessarily stupider than any particular white man. Because I sure have met some stooopid white men too. And as far as racism goes, I think minoritys have a higher percent of racism than whites. I don't know how many times I've heard "you white guys are all racist". That is just as racist as "You black guys are sex fiends". If I'm so racist, how come both a Mexican and a Native American named their first born males after me? I think some of you prejudiced minoritys ought to get to know me better before judging me a racist. |
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20th May 2017, 09:42 AM | #38 |
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Last I heard, there are about 7 genes tied to skin color. I don't think any of them have been tied to IQ.
But that does not mean there are no ethnic or regional differences in IQ. I do think there ought to be more study done though. If for no other reason than the possibility of eliminating the skin color from the equation. Tranwreck, wouldn't it be nice to say "There is no scientific basis to relate skin color to IQ"? You can't say that now. Yet. |
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20th May 2017, 09:49 AM | #39 |
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You are flatly wrong. Murray has been one of the most influential racists of the last couple decades. His shoddy science has given an intellectual foundation to a wide range of malicious beliefs.
You can stubbornly refuse to see the truth in front of you, but, again, the man generates bunk science for the express reason of attempting to prove that black people are genetically inferior to white people. Hey, that's *********** racist.
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That you, like Harris, have chosen to ignore the actual science making it difficult to see where the malicious, flawed reasoning takes place is not a compelling argument against Murray's racism.
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THAT is the reason for the criticism. |
20th May 2017, 09:52 AM | #40 |
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...I'm not sure why people are having so much trouble following the discussion. Please read the article in the OP.
I and the various scientists I cited are not (1) denying that intelligence and IQ are, at least in part, heritable; we are not (2) the ones making the strong assertion about what the current science proves. Murray has asserted that there is sufficient evidence to conclude that black people are genetically less intelligent than white people. This is a strong, totally unjustified conclusion. The arguments you are directing at me, for some reason, need to be aimed at Murray. I fully accept that IQ and intelligence in an individual and in groups is partly determined by a range of heritable factors and environmental conditions. That ruins Murray's arguments, not mine. |
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