# 212, with Kathryn Paige Harden

Sam initially asked Kathryn to explain to the audience why they were even talking; she said her article in Vox critical of Sam's interview with Charles Murray offended him in the way she didn’t expect. And then his latest interview #211 with Robert Plomin made it sound like he thought school was irrelevant because intelligence was predetermined by genetics, and she was provoked by that and responded.

Sam then claims a central error she made was to say that Murray says MOST of the difference in IQ testing between whites and blacks is due to genetics.

He’s confused. The article never said that. (Here it is: https://labs.la.utexas.edu/harden/files/2018/10/Charles-Murray-is-once-again-peddling-junk-science-about-race-and-IQ-Vox.pdf)

But why does he even split that hair? He and Murray both said that it is inevitable that SOME of the IQ testing difference must be due to genetics. So by definition, he has committed himself to a racist conclusion. After all, it is the very definition of racism to say that some races are more intelligent than others. I'm not sure how he thinks he has dodged that bullet.

Here is my understanding of the “default hypothesis” that Sam and Charles had framed:
A. Intelligence is a thing and IQ tests measure some aspect of it
B. Genes play a role in intelligence
C. Some of the IQ differences between groups is due to genetics

I was surprised that Kathryn pushed back even on this hypothesis. And she asks the same question that Sam asked Charles, “why would anybody want to discuss the possibilty that a genetic test may someday prove that one group is inferior to another?” and she pushes back a little harder on that, too: it’s insulting, it shows your prior prejudices, and in the infinite space of possibilities, it speaks poorly of you to choose to focus on that.

Sam makes a very strange point which I think he doesn’t realize works against him when he says that any lover of pure statistics could divide the population up into any random group and then measure their differences. He gives a silly example: people who love the Yankees versus people who love the White Sox. Test for average genetic differences between those two groups, he says, and you will assuredly find differences. But, he concludes, “it fucking doesn’t matter.“

So why do it? And why come to the defense of someone who did, if he chose to do it in an insulting way that perpetuates a racist narrative? Unless you had some kind of underlying socio-political motivation, which Charles frankly admits that he does. He wants to cut affirmative action and welfare. He thinks the former cheapens the achievement of "black people at Harvard" and may even harm the ones who find themselves in over their heads. And he thinks the latter is creating a class of less-gifted dependants who are flooding the country with their lower-G babies (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/).

So this is my biggest problem with Charles, and my reason this is one of the rare times I don't agree with Sam. He doesn't recognize that, regardless of the validity of the science Charles refers to, it is being marshaled for a political end that the science alone doesn't support. It doesn’t help Charles is funded by right wing money which shares his aim to cut social services, but for less noble reasons. To say nothing of the succor Charles is lending to white supremacists.

Sam admits he asked Murray “why study differences in populations at all for which I don’t think he had a great answer.” He and Kaitlyn come close to addressing the question of Murray’s motivations when they discuss the factors that influence educational attainment, including socioeconomic and family history luck, as well as genetic luck if genes are in there. Kaitlyn acknowledges the luck also, but she says her fundamental difference is whether this luck can be influenced by social policy. Charles was clear that he thought it could not.

Charles claimed in that earlier conversation that his only motivation to even ask the question in the first place is to “defang the political serpent that the reality of human difference is dangerous territory.” But when your motivation is political, you are sharpening the teeth, you aren't defanging.

The last thing to note is that Sam seems to reject firmly any responsibility that the scientist has to consider the social implications of any discovery he makes.

Addendum: #73 REDUX

I went back and replayed that episode with Charles Murray, and noticed that even in the preamble Sam gives before the conversation, he makes the claim that the criticism of Charles had nothing to do with his motivations in publishing this work, which is exactly the opposite of what I understand--the criticisms are 100% about his motivations.

By about 39 minutes into the conversation, into the podcast, Sam and Charles come up to the question of the usefulness of education, since it has in the long term very little effect on an individual’s intelligence. This has something to do with Kathryn’s concerns that this conversation in #211 also imply that school is a waste of time.

58 minutes into the podcast, they talk about variations in IQ across populations, and so far I do not hear any of Sam‘s purported backpedaling of potential bad data or inconclusive factors or anything acknowledging that the question might not be perfectly unassailable.

At 1.05 hours, they broach the question of the Flynn effect and whether it is safe to assume that IQ is a stable metric, and they disregard callously the problem that this effect might completely overwhelm any observed differences by race. THis is an important point that the Vox article gets and that even to this day, Sam still doesn't. I have to say this is one of the sloppiest sections of the conversation.

At 1:13 Sam repeats the question of why to seek out differences between groups and get this answer: “because...social policy... is raising the cost of hiring (minority) applicants." Which, as far as I can observe as a businessman, is fatuous to the point of disingenuous. As well as completely deaf to the overwhelming data that racism in hiring is still a thing.

If only Charles and his co-author had left out that whole question! They raise so many other critically important ones, which have been completely overlooked. Such as this: since the 1950s, high cognition was valued at a premium and began to stratify society. This kind of separation of the classes is increasingly worrisome. The upper classes disdain the lower classes. The lower classes notice this and are now voting for complete douchebags for president, just to get back at them.

He makes a compelling point that in the 1950s, they were very few ostentatious mansions in the country, and the oligarchs who lived in them were still cheek by jowl with the middle class. Nowadays there are neighborhoods of mansions all over the country, and they are all highly segregated by rings of decreasingly affluent ZIP Codes before they even come in touch with a single working class person. And we are becoming a kind of technocratic feudal system. Fewer than 100,000 people make up the nobles in what Charles calls the “narrow elite” who are the ones who move the needle on what society believes and what they hear about. This includes journalists, CEOs, politicians, and producers in the entertainment industry. The rest of us get to be the serfs. Yes, we divide up into various castes... but we're the serfs.

#209 "A Good Life" with Scott Barry Kaufman

As brought up on the Reddit board r/Samharris, this episode was notable for its skew of Sam's airtime compared to the airtime of his guest. It really is more like Scott is interviewing Sam and not the other way around. And, unfortunately for the Sam Harris listener, that means you get to hear, again, his ideas about psychotropic drug use and meditation &c.

For a layperson like me, there was still much of interest discussed. Here are a few examples of thoughts that stuck out, for me:

Apparently, the field of psychology in general doesn’t like the "squishy" realm of positive psychology. Psychologists prefer to think of themselves as men of science, and they don't want to be mixed up with the gurus and charlatans and self-help aisle denizens.

Transcendees v self-actualizers: Sam and Barry find it useful to divide people into those who seek to change within, versus those who seek to change the world. Looking back on that part of their discussion now, I wonder if they meant only a certain segment? The high-achievers? Or the entire world population? Because I imagine that most of us manage to muddle along leading our little lives of a certain quietude. Not quiet desparation, either, but something less intentional. Quiet equanimity, I think. We roll with the day's punches, and then come home to crack a beer and watch some TV before going to bed and doing it all again the next day. I work with these people, I ride the trolley with them, and I shop at Safeway with them. I don't see a lot of transcendence or self-actualization.

By about 30 minutes in this two hour episode, Sam begins to monopolize most of the air time. Somewhere around 40 minutes in, he is proselytizing about psychedelics for expanding your consciousness. He compares it to an Olympic weightlifter having to train and train to get that body, versus somebody who can just transport in via drugs and lift the same weights.

But here's the thing: one can measure what a weightlifter can lift. But Sam has no measurables for his claims of a more weightlifter-y mind that is supposedly available, post pharmaceuticals. He admits that it is an ephemeral peak experience, but he says its lasting value is to give you a flash of insight: the transcendant wisdom achievable through meditation. Only, he doesn't produce any quantifiable benefits. But so what if you understand your lack of free will? Or imagine you are the "humunculous riding around in your head" like an elephant rider? I'm surrounded by people who have done acid, or pot, or hell even nutmeg, and they appear to have no measurable advantage over the general population. So I remain a sceptic that Sam's drug-induced (or even meditation-induced) insights have any value.

After pontificating about psychedelics, Sam does go back to the interview for short gasps, and Scott manages to get in a word or two about Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Google that one and you'll see the famous pyramid they talk about, with a wide base of basic health and safety, then love and esteem in the middle, topped off by a narrow peak of self-actualization. The implication being that you can't worry about self-actualization if you don't have a place to live, or a someone to love you.

But Scott tells about Maslow at the end of his life, as his health declines and therefore he is less secure in his pyramid's base, and yet he found to his surprise that crisis transcended his basic needs for security and somehow he was able to live more fully in the moment and be more creative than before.

Which is a hopeful vision of old age, and a great place to stop.

#207: Turning Back from the Brink

This was a single hour-plus exhortation (some might call it a rant) on one of Sam’s biggest peeves: identity politics.

Preface: Sam says very explicitly that he is certain that racism, institutional and unstated, has led to the systematic oppression of black people in this country since it started, and he does not deny that the problem has yet to be completely fixed. But, he says, looking for instances of racism where they don’t necessarily exist may cause more harm than good to the black community, and to the country in general.

Sam is also very sceptical of "woke” people who think that police protection is a luxury for the privileged and that "defunding the police" is actually an option. These people may be assuaging their liberal guilt by such a pose, but they will send the rest of us rushing into the arms of a law-and-order president. They do not understand the violence and depravity that is possible in a society with no police force.

There are about 10,000,000 arrests--i.e. cop-citizen encounters--per year in the US. Of these, about 1,000 deaths result. Roughly 25% of those are black, 50% white. This sounds high compared to the 13% black population, but it is low compared to, say, the 50% of the murders in this country committed by black people.

The Ferguson effect is a potentially negative downside to the recent riots: namely, there will be less policing in black neighborhoods after an explosion of moral outrage, regardless of how legitimate that outrage is. This will be to the detriment of the residents in terms of law enforcement there. However, I'll point out that Sam does not acknowledge that those residents may decide it is worth the trade-off, if it reduces any racist behavior of the police. For instance, in Milwaukee, blacks are more likely to be murdered than whites. But they may be willing to live with those odds if they no longer think they are being targeted by the cops.

Here's an unrelated fun fact: whites are three times more likely than blacks to commit suicide by cop.

Sam spends some time making the point that cops are not superheroes: they are ordinary people with insufficient training. Anytime someone chooses to resist arrest, it immediately becomes perceived by the police as a struggle for the gun. And the way that often ends is by the use of lethal force.

Sam also points out that it is almost certainly true that the people who killed George Floyd did not intend to kill him--not with all the witnesses & cameras rolling around them.

One other thing he grants is that police have responded badly to the protests recently: they come in baton swinging against peaceful marchers, but they stand idly by during looting and rioting. And his is concerned that these actions are not going to provoke an improvement in anything except Trump‘s approval rating.

#204 with Jonathon Haight

Jonathan is a thinker I highly admire: I consider his book The Righteous Mind to be a life-changing read. So I was excited to see this episode. And I wasn’t disappointed, even though no new ground was broken or surprising ideas revealed. Because let's face it: in May of 2020, it's just nice just to occasionally hear two adults talking.

But lest you think I’m referring supporters of the orange baby-monster in the White House (actually, I was) I should note that Jon warned against the polarization not only of ideology but also of personality, which he thinks is more dangerous. So, okay, let me walk that back. Supporters of the orange baby-monster may not all be infantile in their cognitive ability.

In the past, Jon says people just fought over ideologies. But now we hate each other's lifestyles too: coastal elites hate the flyover deplorables, MAGA-cap wearers hate urban degenerates, etc.

True to his form, Jon points out more stirring psychological pitfalls. For instance, if you say “Trump is a corrupt liar,” that may be obvious to the people on your side, and incomprehensible that anyone would debate the point. But, amusingly, Jon says that all the other side has to do to disprove you is find something--one thing--he said that wasn’t a corrupt lie, and they'll think they've refuted you. Which I happen to know is true, at least with my own mother.

If you think this glorifies fuzzyheaded and obfuscating thinking, Jon cautions, remember that the alternative is to believe, as many intelligent people do, that the other side are all evil monsters who want to destroy humanity. That's obviously just stupid, so an explanation like Jon's has to have some merit.

On a non-Trump note, Jon also corrected his earlier claim that “screen time is bad for kids.” He amended it to “middle school girls should not be on Instagram.” In other words, he thinks it’s just fine for middle school or other boys to, say, play interactive video games a few hours a day. (Or even ten hours a day, according to my own middle-schooler.)

Jon's final words: follow the Buddhists and the great way: lose your judgmental partisanship and stop thinking that the other side is stupid and evil.

(But you still shouldn't vote for Trump!)

#205 with Daniel Markovits

I absolutely LOVED this episode. It covers one of the most pressing issues that, for me, loom as the one that may ultimately destroy America: the incipient American oligarchy.

My enjoyment was exponentially increased by the problem that I, as a resident of Silicon Valley, am increasingly concerned with: the myth of the meritocracy.

Here are some random observations during the course of this conversation that struck me as noteworthy:

The elite pay 15 times as much on pre-college education than the middle class. This creates an enormous obstacle to equality.

Poverty is falling, but we conversely have a growing gap between the merely rich and the super rich.

Most kids born in 1940 had an excellent chance of being richer than their parents. Most middle class kids born in 1980 have only a small chance of being richer than their parents. Only the 1% and those below poverty are likely to do better.

There is a moral insult to the erstwhile middle class that the reason you aren’t keeping up is because you aren’t good enough. So their life expectancy is actually decreasing... and it's happening overwhelmingly through their own self-harm: overeating, smoking, drugs and alcoholism.

I don’t understand why Daniel tries to make a distinction between the cost of living in San Francisco or New York versus--I don't know, say, Duluth--and pretend that some things are cheaper in San Francisco. Nothing is cheaper in San Francisco.

Daniel brings up a fascinating point that the elitist educational system helps train the meritocracy to invent things which only to further their socioeconomic class--open heart surgery for the super rich, and not a simple exercise device that the masses can consume. Or mortgage back derivatives for the upper 1% to invest in, and not a public financing device that might lift all boats.

Daniel points out the the tax break Princeton gets per student is $100k per student per year, whereas community college tax breaks is a tiny fraction of that.

Daniel suggests that Ivy League schools could double their enrollment and give opportunities to a wider spectrum of kids. However, my personal suspicion is that if Ivy League colleges doubled their enrollment tomorrow, the level of accepted applicants wouldn't drop by any noticeable level. My experience as the dad of a college freshman is that the extremely competitive level of kids on the waiting list were for all intents and purposes completely equal to those who made it in.

Daniel makes an interesting point that not all government services are so much less efficient in private industry. Consider, he says, the benefits to the average American household from paying $10,000 per year in taxes: they get police, fire, ambulance, roads, garbage, water, sewer, city planning, emergency care for indigenous, etc. etc. Now compare that to the cost of subscription to Comcast: $2000 per year, and they don’t even get a single TV show they like, plus crappy customer service.

I object to one flaw in this argument: the question isn’t how much some particular household pays into the tax roll, but rather how much is the total cost of government services per household. Even if they don't pay proportionately as much taxes per dollar earned, the wealthy do still pay more in taxes. They are subsidizing the rest of us by some amount. So maybe the true number is $20-$30k per houshold is what our government services cost. But it's still a valid arguement. As a businessman, I see ungodly tons of private money being flushed down drains every day.

Daniel thinks the lifelong rat race the super elite live might provide an incentive to change the system.

Ok, after that disconnected jumble of thoughts, here's my attempt at a Recap: The meritocracy system is working so well that it is very efficiently focusing wealth within the rich and super rich. If we don’t soon fix this, we will be soon be in a feudalistic society that will make 10th century China or Europe to look positively egalitarian in comparison. Even though we currently think nothing could be more egalitarian than a meritocracy.

No 201 with Yuval Noah Harari

Sam didn't book this fellow in order to talk about some particular issue with his trademark intensity and focus. This was more like one of his Paul Bloom conversations, where they just allow the conversation to wander as it will. And one get the sense that Yuval wasn't asked to be on as an "expert" in anything--AI or MeToo or whatever--but to just give his thoughtful take on larger picture trends. They mostly talk about wealth inequality, some limits of democracy, and the shifting roles of science and religion.

LIMITS OF DEMOCRACY
Yuval distinguishes between allowing “experts” to define the larger goals of society, versus asking experts to tell us the best plan to accomplish these goals.

Don’t ask the AMA how to respond to COVID, or NOAA how to to solve global warming. Instead, have a plebiscite and vote on the overall solution. Then, once you have agreed upon a goal--i.e. that you don’t want 5% to die--that is when you call in the experts and ask for the scientifically valid path to that goal.

One other point Yuval makes is that it has always been risky,throughout history, to allow the hoi polloi to vote democratically. But now for the first time in history our leaders have the technology to hack us and our desires (through google analytics etc) so we need to be vigilant about that.

SCIENCE V RELIGION
Yuval tells us that in the time of the Black Death, the king of France asked the best minds of the University of Paris what was causing the plague, and they put together a report saying the problem was astrological. So at least we're doing better than that, this time around.

Yuval points to three changes in our society thanks to modern medicine:

Number one. Because death is no longer an omnipresent phenomenon, we no longer incorporate the afterlife into modern philosophies. In other words, feminism, communism--they are not concerned about what happens after we die because we don’t have to answer that question on a daily basis anymore.

Number two. Because science has a good understanding of when somebody dies, we no longer accept an untimely death without objection and reaction--somebody is to blame

Number three. The role of religion is diminished in modern life, and we no longer ask our spiritual guides to heal us like we used to back in the time of Jesus and Mohammed and so on. "Religion was invented to find excuses, but science was invented to find solutions."

#203 with Kaitlyn Flanagan

This is an interesting new conversation that manages to avoid rehashing stuff that Sam and Kaitlyn have already gone over—they spend a fair amount of time talking about her stage-four cancer diagnosis and also the tweet that some doctor named Amitha Kalaichandran who posted about her which belied that doctor’s status as a contributor to the New York Times and the Atlantic Monthly, because the doctor plays her #WOC race card in an astoundingly tone-deaf way. And it’s not even correctly applied!

They also talk about Tara Reid and Joe Biden. Kaitlyn tries to make a very important solid point that we need to come up with something about Biden that will inspire people to vote FOR him and not merely AGAINST Trump, but unfortunately Sam doesn’t hear that very clearly, and it passes over.

They wander from there onto the larger question of “whither feminism” and some AP style manual update which says not to refer to the female lover of a married man as “his mistress” because that is archaic. Fortunately both Kaitlyn and Sam stand on the same side of that gate, which has probably most of the left and also the AP style manual playing the role of the barbarians.