#222, A Pandemic of Incompetence with Nicholas Christakis

This episode has to be one of the more immediately useful and informative of Sam's podcasts. Perhaps not as philosophical or entertaining as others, but it is great to listen to an actual expert talk about this pandemic based on experience and science, as opposed to what we usually get from all media, news and social--ie. a bunch of bloviating politicians telling us their spins.

So, yeah. This is one of the few episodes I'm going to try to get my family to listen to because it covers things like whether you can get COVID from restaurant food, or how long you should self-quarantine for before visiting someone. And they also give a peek into what 2021 and 2022 are probably going to look like.

Making Sense #217, with Michael McWhorter (Also a word on #216)

The Sam Harris podcast with Michael McWhorter, covers a lot of old ground, but still there are four interesting points brought up:

1: Michael says the one thing we have to do to stop evangelical anti-racists from bullying you for not being as "woke" as them is to "punch them in the nose." Metaphotically. Like they were just some shark trying to bite you in the ocean. In other words, just tell them “no, I am not a racist, even though I disagree with you,” and move on. They might still try to take a bite or two out of you, but just stand firm, keep your spine stiff and your back straight and don’t let them think they are getting a concession out of you. And don’t try to argue with them because you can’t reason with a zealot.

2: The new religion of antiracism depends upon Black people exalting race as the central dominant thing about their identity. In my book, that makes them racists.

3: The anti-racist sector is so committed to their religion that they will lash themselves to it and go down with the ship of this country rather than make any concessions. So they don't share the goal of many of us of defeating Trump in November. Just as, in 1994, they celebrated the "not guilty" verdict in the O.J. Simpson trial, even though they all knew he was guilty, and that the verdict meant turning an obvious murderer loose on society.

4: We need to stop allowing people to claim that every difference between black and white people currently in our country is the direct result of active racism. Every time a black guy doesn’t get a job, every time a black girl doesn’t get in a college, every time a black criminal is killed resisting arrest, it means racism to them. And of course, since they know that nothing bad can happen to a black person without it being a white person's fault, that means they are all--you guessed it--racists (my words, not Sam's of Michael's).

BRIEF NOTE ON #216 WITH GRAEME WOOD
The previous podcast covered a lot of the same themes as #217, and also re-capped themes Sam has espoused earlier. There wasn't much in the way of new information given out in the podcast, and I don't have much to say about it. One recurring theme that crops up again here is that the media jumped all over the Kyle Rittenhouse shooting and made him out to be a racist and who-know-what-else, but none of those conclusions are supported by known facts. In other words, this just looks like another woke leftist's rush to judgment.

A Short Review of Joseph Heller's "Catch-22"

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

(Note: this review is posted here only because it pertains to a work of fiction which I imagine most followers of Sam are naturally inclined to appreciate.)

It didn't change my life, the way everyone said it was going to. I guess if I'd read it when I was 15 I might have felt differently. Certainly it isn't fair to judge a book that was ground-breaking in 1961 with the criticism that it has become so deeply ingrained in our culture that it is no longer possible to read it with innocent and unjaded eyes.

It's a complex and deeply flawed work of unexpected genius. There are moments in the book when Heller's prose flows out elegantly and magnificent, and there are moments in the book when he is painting a piercingly accurate snapshot of a man's soul... and then there are far more moments in the book when he is romping about, erratic and boisterous like a Mad Magazine writer on crack.

There are also a ton of repetitions of the above. I suppose the latter was part of his grand scheme to drive home one of the central themes of the book: the obdurate and unavoidable stupidity of mankind, even during what we now whitewash over in awe-hushed tones of heroic adulation as "the last good war" fought by "the greatest generation."

This is a thinking man's book, a philosophical, historic book. It is a book for people who are ready to have their benignly Amerocentric world-view stress-tested. It is not a book for people who are looking for touching portrayals of interesting relationships.

View all my reviews

Political aside: NOVEMBER MANIFESTO

NOVEMBER MANIFESTO

Charles Joseph Albert



We all know people whom we otherwise admire with whom we disagree on political questions such as whether government should be bigger or smaller, or whether healthcare is a right or a privilege, or even whether the recent climate change is anthropogenic or natural in origin. It is likely that that one’s beliefs on these sorts of issues come from fundamental moral convictions: a conservative mentality seems to be linked to a reverence for law and order, and a liberal world view is correlated with an aspiration for fairness. In any case, both inclinations are moral, and valid, and important to the well-being of any country.

However, we also know that throughout human history, there have been political issues in which one side clearly holds moral superiority. We can all, conservatives and liberals alike, agree that Stalin was not justified in starving to death entire peoples in Soviet Russia. We concur that Pol Pot was indefensible in butchering over a million Cambodians. We can recognize the odiousness of James Henry Hammond’s promotion of slavery in America. These people are understood to be moral failures, their positions are abnegations of the most basic human rights.

I want to distinguish between the more weighty moral questions and the mere differences of political opinion because in this time of political hyperbole and extreme partisanship, we seem to be often conflating the two. This is a mistake. We need recognize the absolute necessity of embracing and celebrating divergent political opinions: this is a fundamental strength of democracy. But we should also recognize and condemn immoral attacks on the values that had once made America great.

There has been a steady current criticism of President Trump in the liberal media since even before he took office, with much lamenting over his cronyism, his pettiness, his sexual immorality. And yet many people of good faith found they could support the man despite these personality flaws.

However, we soon learned that Trump’s flaws went deeper than mere personality. The Trump presidency has, to my count, crossed five moral lines in the sand--any one of which should have been sufficient for all Americans of good faith to recognize as an unforgivable failure, a complete and unarguable disqualification to be President:

1. Erosions of Democracy
Trump’s embrace of Russian interference and his subsequent obstructions of the Mueller investigation should have been enough to get him impeached, and surely would have were it not for an appalling display of party over country by the Republican Party.

The conclusions of Part 2 of the Report are very clear: Trump obstructed, he withheld information, and he directed his staff to break the law. Mueller concluded by pointing out that he didn’t have the authority to judge the criminality of Trump’s actions, urged Congress to act. But the Republican controlled Senate made sure that didn’t happen.

However, even the appalling complicity of Mitch McConnel couldn’t protect Trump from his own fully documented attempts to instigate a deceitful Ukrainian investigation into Joe Biden--at the expense of our relationship with that critical political ally--was enough to get him, rightfully, impeached. It should have been enough to get him removed from office, but once again, the Republicans and McConnell rushed to his indefensible defense.

Currently, the cuts and reductions at the Post Office by Trump’s allies come at the expense of the greater population--as we have seen in countless recent stories of delayed deliveries and lost mail--and have as the principal beneficiary only Trump. If his mnuchen, Steve Minion, had just been able to get away with the sabotage, Trump would have won bragging rights for the elimination of a government-subsidized program that is the only means of delivery for many rural communities. He would also get revenge on one of his enemies, Jeff Bezos. But most importantly, as he has admitted himself in a rare and ill-advised moment of candor, he gets to suppress mail-in votes.

2. Asylum
Every civilized country in the world allows asylum-seekers entry into their borders. To refuse to allow refugees in is, for many, a death sentence. Good people may differ on whether a particular immigrant family’s story is valid. But the fact is irrefutable that many who have been turned away by Trump’s closing of the southern border are now dead. This is as fundamentally unAmerican as any evil imaginable. Indeed, Trump’s anti-abortion supporters, who have claimed a higher moral ground for his packing of the courts with “right to life” candidates, are completely kneecapped by this act alone.

Less immediately life–or-death but equally immoral was the administration’s policy of separating children from their parents, which is universally understood to cause long-term harm. Thousands of children brought here to legally apply for protection at our borders have been immediately stripped from their families and put into the custodianship of an indifferent and inept bureaucracy, for no better reason than discouraging future refugee families.

3. COVID-19
Trump’s inept and callous initial response to COVID-19 has resulted in the avoidable death of tens of thousands more Americans than if we’d had a competent and intelligent president. In those first few weeks, his leadership offered nothing more than denial of science, magical thinking, and more concern for his reelection chances than for the welfare of others.

In May 2018 he disbanded the federal pandemic team. In January 2020 he refused to act even as other countries and even US states like California began to create response protocols. By the end of February the federal government had still done nothing, and Trump was promising his base that it was less dangerous than the flu and would go away “like magic.” Meanwhile, California put together an entire shelter-in-place program. All through the spring, he continued to peddle quack remedies and urge people to rebel against state governments who were actually trying to combat the spread. In the pinnacle of callousness, he even held the rally in Tulsa, driving infection rates up 200%.

Let’s compare the death rate in California to that of the nation. This is the most conservative approach I know to calculating the excess number of deaths due to Trump's ineptitude, the inexcusable negligence of his handlers, and the unbelievable gullibility of his supporters.

California currently has 30 deaths per 100,000 population. If the entire country’s COVID response had been managed by an equally competent administration, there would be fewer than 99,000 total deaths, instead of over 180,000 actual. This is ignoring how many fewer would be dead in California if there had been any competence in Washington. And it means that the blood of over 80,000 is on the hands of Trump and everyone reprehensible enough to still be supporting him.

4. Denial of Reality
Even before Trump was a candidate, his birtherism should have been a red flag clearly signaling his unfitness for the highest office in the land. And his insistence that Hillary Clinton deserved to be “locked up” for her emails or for Benghazi, despite lacking any evidence to support those claims, was yet another indication that this man was unfit for office. After all, he would be in charge of the Justice Department.

The president must be the leading defender of the constitution and the rule of law. Trump has instead demonstrated a complete disregard or even ignorance of it. The excuse offered by his supporters is that “all politician lie,” but the Trump administration has elevated alternate facts such a pitch as has never before been seen. Even the most cursory glance into the Trump record on lying yields an embarrassment of data that should blanch the soul of even the most ostrich-like partisan.

History will not judge kindly this country’s dangerous dip into Nerovian levels of self-delusion. Trump’s inability to grasp reality in all questions of national interest--health science, economics, diplomacy… even meteorology--could not any more clearly indicate his complete lack of fitness for his post.

5. International Standing
During Trump’s campaign for president, he often claimed that the United States had become a laughing stock in the world, that the shameful legacy of Obama was that we were bullied by allies and adversaries alike. He promised to replace the Iran nuclear deal with something more advantageous to America, and to deal more firmly with the nuclear threat of North Korea. He has failed miserably. The entire world is now closer to nuclear war than it has ever been. But he has vindicated his “laughing stock” claim, for it is now impossible to find a country anywhere in the world which still respects the leadership of United States. Trump has made us irrelevant in many international meetings.

It is not immoral to allow America to fade into international irrelevance… except that the mendacious and authoritarian regime of China is the only other superpower. And the murderous thugs of the Putin regime to continue to destabilize democracies around the globe. And it is immoral to lack concern for the fate of humanity outside of the US borders. And so is the inability to recognize that injustice anywhere is equivalent to injustice everywhere.

So there you have it. Five primary reasons why it is unAmerican to support Trump in 2020. I have not mentioned his unconstitutional attacks on peaceful protesters, his hundreds of unconstitutional instructions to his staff which were only aborted because they refused to carry them out, or any of the other signs that the man is the least fit President in this country’s history. It is conceivable that, with the right spin, some of that might be overlooked.

But these five iron-clad reasons that every true American must vote for Biden in November cannot be hand-waived away. Only lamentable ignorance or an amoral hyper-partisanship can do that.

Either way, may the historians of the future have mercy on your damaged soul.

# 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.