Review of Waking Up #123: IDENTITY AND HONESTY

Official Notes:

"In this episode of the Waking Up podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Ezra Klein, Editor-at-Large for Vox Media, about racism, identity politics, intellectual honesty, and the controversy over his podcast with Charles Murray (Waking Up #73).

Ezra Klein is the editor-at-large and founder of Vox. Before that, he was columnist and editor at the Washington Post, a policy analyst at MSNBC, and a contributor to Bloomberg."

As of this writing (4/20/2018), the podcast may be found here:

This conversation between Sam Harris and Ezra Klein stems from Sam's episode number 73, the controversial interview with Charles Murray (reviewed previously). I found this conversation intriguing for several reasons:

1) There are some highly-charged issues discussed here by two men of no small, uh... shall we say, self esteem. Both are quite accomplished at keeping ego to a minimum and eloquently defending their points of view. They manage to get through the entire episode without losing their cool, quite a feat given the stakes: essentially, is one of them a racist or is the other one a simpleton? Would that I were as accomplished in such prickly (or even equanimous!) conversations. It demonstrates one of the reasons why I think Sam is as close to a divinity as we will find on this earth.

2) The episode does a stellar job of highlighting Sam's blind spots, which are few, but which really do seem to be persistent and beyond even his ability to recognize. One such intellectual Achilles heel is that Murray is not merely some objective man of science, committed to the most rigorous possible interpretation of the data, as Sam paints him to be. Murray's background in social policy and his publication record do indicate a certain bias. (I don't mean to say Murray's a racist. He certainly didn't come off as such in the interview. But it does mean he may not be a completely neutral instrument of observation.) This should be a huge red flag for Sam, but he is so caught up in his own guilt about participating in the "moral panic" against Murray that he doesn't seem to care. And so he digs in his heels to defend data that, for all he knows, Klein is correctly calling dubious. 

3) Another of the blind spots which I have noticed in Sam's podcasts is a certain hypocrisy about "mind-reading." Sam often bemoans the fact that his detractors claim to know what he really means to say, when really they should accept on face value what he says. You might think that if this is such a big issue with him, he would be extra careful not to do the same and ascribe motivations to his opponents. Especially if they aren't broadcasting said motivations, and therefore these must be guessed through some magical mind-reading ability on Sam's part. And for the most part Sam doesn't do this. But in this particular conversation, Sam concludes that Klein et al. are out to get him in statements like: "What has been accomplished in Murray’s case, and is being attempted in mine (italics mine), is nothing less than the total destruction of a person’s reputation."

Such a claim demonstrates not only a certain hypocrisy, but also a tinge of paranoia that is probably only making Sam's blind spot worse. Sam, buddy--word of advice: purge yourself of the bad-faith interpretation about what Klein is doing and you might be more open to actually hearing him.


4) Another valuable datum gleaned from this conversation is the fact that Murray is not a scientist but a policy analyst, and not only that, but he comes into this issue with an ax to grind. It was almost comical to hear someone as scientifically illiterate as Klein try to make this point, and unfortunately given Klein's lack of creds in this area I think Sam doesn't pay enough attention to him here (another blind spot?) but essentially the jury is still out on how well linked any of Murray's data is to genetic origins within populations. It is therefore highly unwise to use the data as a basis to draw any conclusions. Though Murray, apparently oblivious to this problem, does draw conclusions and even recommends policy.
The dangers of drawing a conclusions from fuzzy data when you have an ax to grind are spectacularly well known. Even in my narrow little domain of physics, we have seen ludicrous results from this sort of thing, such as the infamous Milliken Oil Drop fiasco.