# Interesting podcast conversation between Sam Harris and Charles Murray (of "Bell Curve" fame) **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [April 23, 2017, 9:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052 "2017-04-23T09:21:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2017, 12:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/81 "2017-04-24T12:10:46Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Yes, you predicted in March that Trump would win. Then in, what, September? you announced you had changed your mind, and that he would lose. After the election, you declared that the earlier prediction was the one that counted after all. (Pro tip: this will not work out the way you want it to, if you make the same assumption when drafting multiple versions of your last will and testament.) Ah, so now you tell lies as well? Good to know. ---
**Author:** ![Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/malleus_incus_stapes/32/3293_2.png) [@Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malleus_Incus_Stapes)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2017, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/82 "2017-04-24T12:42:51Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > That is definitely something you like to say. Does anyone know why, or enjoy the non sequitur quirk? Not sure. Some years ago, there was a thread on funny autocorrects. Someone mentioned that their friend once pranked a guy by making his phone autocorrect “LOL” to “let’s go down to the quarry and throw things”. **Snowboarder Bo** decided to adopt that, for whatever reason. ---
**Author:** ![Fotheringay-Phipps](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/d9b06d/32.png) [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2017, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/83 "2017-04-24T13:47:58Z")
> [@Richard\_Parker](#): > > The reason few real scientists are interested in research on racial genetic differences is that it’s not especially interesting discover a difference in gene propensity between arbitrary categories invented by slavers. If a scientist discovered that people named Jerry were more likely to get testicular cancer, it would not be heralded as a scientific revolution. It would be regarded as the discovery of statistical difference between arbitrary groups that doesn’t tell us about why one arbitrary set contains more people with that gene. The same is true for investigation of racial difference. Even when you discover some difference, like propensity to have sickle cell genes, all you’ve discovered is that different arbitrary sets contain different sub-populations of people. It is at most a crude step toward discovering the actual underlying cause (in that example, ancestry among people afflicted by malaria). There’s no particular reason to start at the crude step. Except, of course, if your goal is to support policies to oppress black people (or guys named Jerry), then that level of analysis makes perfect sense. And so it is with guys like Murray. If you want to rail against affirmative action, you have to analyze people at the level of race. I think on balance it’s probably not worthwhile, but your assertions as to the sole usefulness and the motivations of scientists are incorrect. At least if I’m understanding you correctly here. The main usefulness would be if someone is trying to prove that such-and-such “racial” imbalance is necessarily the result of racism. If there are in fact genuine differences in inherent intelligence between the different “races”, then this conclusion doesn’t follow. Since people are constantly making this exact derivation these days, the issue is highly relevant. As for scientists, there might be something in what you say, but in all likelihood they shy away from it mostly because of political correctness considerations. There are things that can be studied without such career threatening potential. All that said, I don’t think it’s worth researching, as above. Not because of the reasons you give, but because it’s likely that it’s impossible to conclusively answer anyway, so this type of study is just getting people riled up for little return. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Economist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c89c15/32.png) [@Evil\_Economist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Economist)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2017, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/84 "2017-04-24T13:50:59Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Then “whiteness” and “white privilege” cannot be real. Let me just say that this is **Clothahump** -level stupid. Literally probably the stupidest statement I’ve read in the past 6 months, and I read YouTube comments. Could you do me a favor and just slap yourself really really hard? ---
**Author:** ![Fenris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fenris/32/498_2.png) [@Fenris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fenris)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2017, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/85 "2017-04-24T13:55:03Z")
> [@Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](#): > > **Snowboarder Bo** decided to adopt that, for whatever reason. I thought consensus was that he does it because of chromosomal damage caused by him eating lead paint chips as a toddler. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2017, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/86 "2017-04-24T14:11:45Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > The main usefulness would be if someone is trying to prove that such-and-such “racial” imbalance is necessarily the result of racism. If there are in fact genuine differences in inherent intelligence between the different “races”, then this conclusion doesn’t follow. Since people are constantly making this exact derivation these days, the issue is highly relevant. I addressed this. Murray types try to make race relevant by denying racism and then searching for a hypothesis to explain the effects of racism. It’s a logically valid way to make race relevant as a category of analysis. The problem is not the logic, but the facts. If you don’t think this denial of racism is plausible, then there’s no particularly strong reason to want to investigate genetics based on classifications invented by slaveholders. Of course, we haven’t identified any intelligence genes and there are plenty who are actively looking. I’m sure that if we find some, we will also explore their distribution in different populations. You seem to think there’s a reasonable chance that we will find statistically significant differences between the groups created by slaveholders. I think the reason you think that has more to do with history than with science. ---
**Author:** ![Ale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@Ale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ale)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2017, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/87 "2017-04-24T14:23:52Z")
> [@Richard\_Parker](#): > > There’s a falsehood and a false and telling assumption here. > > The falsehood is that race predates American slavery. That’s incorrect. The word existed, but it meant something like nation or language speakers. It didn’t refer to continental origin. The idea of 3 or 4 races was distinctly eighteenth century. > > The telling assumption is that you think the idea of a black race must have coincided with black slavery. The reality is that slavers didn’t have to invent racism until the rights of white indentured servants became a problem, which post-dated transatlantic slavery by a century or so. Actually what is telling is your assumptions about what I think. Now you say _“The telling assumption is that you think the idea of a black race must have coincided with black slavery. **The reality is that slavers didn’t have to invent racism until the rights of white indentured servants became a problem** ”_ Before you said _“The idea of a black race including humans with widely varying ancestries and ethnicity does not come from the study of biology. **It was invented by slavers in America.** ”_ Bolding mine in case you don’t see that it’s you who said what you _assume_ I think. In any case… _“The falsehood is that race predates American slavery. That’s incorrect. The word existed, but it meant something like nation or language speakers.”_ Right, people didn’t notice physical differences among people of different origins and used them to ascribe all sort of values (or lack of) and judge them on that basis (AKA racism) until the American slave owners came around… :rolleyes: [ > [@](#): > > Classical civilizations from Rome to China tended to invest the most importance in familial or tribal affiliation than an individual’s physical appearance (Dikötter 1992; Goldenberg 2003). **Societies still tended to equate physical characteristics, such as hair and eye colour, with psychological and moral qualities, usually assigning the highest qualities to their own people and lower qualities to the “Other”** , either lower classes or outsiders to their society. For example, an historian of the 3rd century Han Dynasty in the territory of present-day China describes barbarians of blond hair and green eyes as resembling “the monkeys from which they are descended.” ]([Historical race concepts - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_race_concepts)) And: [ > [@](#): > > Benjamin Isaac, in The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity (2006), reports that scientific racism is rooted in Græco–Roman antiquity.[9] A prime example is the 5th century BC treatise Airs, Waters, Places by Hippocrates, about which Pseudo-Aristotle notes: > > ``` > **The idea that dark people are cowards, and light people courageous fighters, is found already in Airs, Waters, Places.** [10] > > ``` > > On the other hand the ancient Indians considered all foreigners as barbarians. The 11th century Muslim scholar Al-Biruni wrote that the Indians call the foreigners impure.[11] A few centuries later Dubois observes that **Hindus look upon Europeans as barbarians totally ignorant of all principles of honour and good breeding** … In the eyes of a Hindu, a Pariah (outcast) and a European are on the same level.[11] > > **The Chinese also viewed the Europeans as repulsive, ghost-like creatures and even devils. The Chinese writers also referred to the Europeans as barbarians.** [12] > > A further example is the Roman writer, architect, and engineer Vitruvius (70–25 BC), who, relying upon the racial theories of the Greek Stoic polymath Posidonius (c. 135 – 51 BC), said: > > ``` > ... those races nearest to the southern half of the axis are of lower stature, with swarthy complexions, curly hair, black eyes, and little blood, on account of the sun. This poverty of blood makes them over-timid to stand up against the sword ... On the other hand, men born in cold countries are, indeed, ready to meet the shock of arms with great courage and without timidity. > > ``` ]([Scientific racism - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism#Origins_of_scientific_racism)) Your historical revisionism doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2017, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/88 "2017-04-24T14:34:03Z")
**Ale** : Your post is quite confused. I’m making two claims. You tell me which one you dispute, or both: (1) The idea of races of humans consisting of all the people from entire continents who share traits did not exist until around the beginning of the eighteenth century; (2) This was more than a hundred years after transatlantic slavery in the Americas. ---
**Author:** ![Fotheringay-Phipps](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/d9b06d/32.png) [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2017, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/89 "2017-04-24T14:55:04Z")
> [@Richard\_Parker](#): > > I addressed this. Murray types try to make race relevant by denying racism and then searching for a hypothesis to explain the effects of racism. It’s a logically valid way to make race relevant as a category of analysis. The problem is not the logic, but the facts. If you don’t think this denial of racism is plausible, then there’s no particularly strong reason to want to investigate genetics based on classifications invented by slaveholders. “Denial of racism” may or may not be plausible in any individual instance, and racism may play more or less of a role in any particular case. As above, the question of whether and to what extent differences in outcome in a given instance can be assumed to result from racism is highly dependent on the extent to which there may be other factors at play, including inherent qualifications which vary by “race”. So it’s very relevant today, when these differences in outcome, and the role racism plays in them, are much in focus. Insisting on dragging in “classifications invented by slaveholders”, when it has no apparent connection to the specific relevance I’m citing, seems like just a way to taint the notion by association, without resort to any logic or fact. (This is even assuming that the classifications were in fact invented by slaveholders, which may or may not be true as far as I’m concerned but seems irrelevant.) ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2017, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/90 "2017-04-24T14:59:43Z")
Step 1. Create classification by “race.” Step 2. Viciously oppress the people that you’ve defined to be part of that race. Step 3. Claim that the result of this oppression might actually be the result of genetic differences and get indignant when people remind you about the history. Step 4: Profit??? ---
**Author:** ![Ale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@Ale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ale)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2017, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/91 "2017-04-24T15:13:25Z")
> [@Richard\_Parker](#): > > **Ale** : > > Your post is quite confused. I’m making two claims. You tell me which one you dispute, or both: > > (1) The idea of races of humans consisting of all the people from entire continents who share traits did not exist until around the beginning of the eighteenth century; > > (2) This was more than a hundred years after transatlantic slavery in the Americas. 1. is completely wrong; obviously several citations of people doing the thing you say they didn’t do were not enough, maybe one more would do the trick? [ > [@](#): > > During the Middle Ages, believing Jews, Christians, and Muslims incorrectly considered Ham to be the ancestor of all Africans. Noah’s curse on Canaan as described in Genesis began to be misinterpreted by some scholars in Europe as having caused visible racial characteristics in all of Ham’s offspring, notably black skin. According to Edith Sanders,\*\* the sixth-century Babylonian Talmud says that “the descendants of Ham are cursed by being Black and [it] depicts Ham as a sinful man and his progeny as degenerates.”[7] Some Arab slave traders used the account of Noah and Ham in the Bible to justify Negro (Zanj) slavery\*\*, and later European and American Christian traders and slave owners adopted a similar argument. ]([Historical race concepts - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_race_concepts#Middle_Ages)) Do you see that “later” in there near the end? What do you think it does to your claim? (hint: it disproves it) By the way, people back then, at least those that concerned themselves with such things, more likely than not didn’t think of the entire population of Africa as belonging to a single race and at the very least would make a distinction between Northern and Sub-Saharan ethnic groups. You are 100% right with 2), the beginning of 18th century came about two centuries after the slave trade to the Americas began. This ranks right about there in significance as the fact that the 19th century came about three centuries century after the slave trade to the Americas began. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2017, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/92 "2017-04-24T15:24:08Z")
So, I think you agree with me on (1). But it’s hard to tell, because you keep changing the details and not realizing that the details are what I’m claiming. And you seem to not understand or have forgotten the significance of (2). So, not sure where to go with that. Maybe calm down and re-read the whole exchange? ---
**Author:** ![Ale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@Ale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ale)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2017, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/93 "2017-04-24T15:39:27Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > Yes, as I’ve said on the Dope before, knowing what genes are responsible for intelligence? That’s useful. > Studying some small population that for some reason has a high IQ? Potentially useful, because it might help us find the genes. > > But making broad brush statements about “races”? Notsomuch. > You’re talking graphs with a _huge_ amount of variance within a group, and potentially, maybe, a tiny difference on average. > > And yet you have so many guys rattling on about how we MUST study this. Why? > It’s because they want to indulge their urge to generalize. They want to think “I must be smarter than that guy, because he’s black”. And treat humans (who are so alike scientists think our species must have had a population bottleneck) like different species. You know, if you would have listened to that podcast you’d have heard that Harris and Murray made exactly the same point you did on your second paragraph and your characterization of what they think in your third paragraph is absolutely wrong. [Around the 1:08:50 point they say it plainly:](https://youtu.be/Y1lEPQYQk8s?t=1h7m55s) \*Harris- The differences between groups are not so large that there isn’t a substantial overlap between them for every trait we care about so that given the variance between individuals will be much higher than the variance between groups again for any trait we care about but specially what we are talking now about intelligence. It would actually be irrational to read much into group differences… Murray- Exactly right. Harris- so that the truth is I learn nothing about a person’s intelligence simply by being told that he is black or white or asian, you still need to treat people as individuals and you make it absolutely clear in your book that given the overlap in these bell curves there will be many many blacks who are far more intelligent than most whites, so this is again it all comes back to honestly evaluating individuals. Murray- I emphatically agree with everything you just said.\* Can you point to anything said in that podcast that supports your characterization of them? ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2017, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/94 "2017-04-24T16:01:02Z")
> [@Ale](#): > > Do you see that “later” in there near the end? What do you think it does to your claim? (hint: it disproves it) > [@Ale](#): > > You are 100% right with 2), the beginning of 18th century came about two centuries after the slave trade to the Americas began. This ranks right about there in significance as the fact that the 19th century came about three centuries century after the slave trade to the Americas began. Seems to me that this “great” rebuttal against **Richard Parker** was not as big as you think. So yeah, he was wrong about how early this was, but correct about races being a construction made to justify rule over others. As a bit of an aside I have to thank you for reminding me why I became an Agnostic/Deist. Clearly one powerful justification of why “race” came to be used to justify slavery was thanks to following the old scriptures, and you pointed at one good reason why historians should reinstate the old fashion designation to those days (c. 5th–10th century) as the Dark Ages. ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2017, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/95 "2017-04-24T16:14:35Z")
I have to agree with \*\*Ale \*\*here. I’m listening to the podcast now and the characterisations of Harris and Murray seem to bear no relation to what they actually say and the conclusions they draw.Their carefully nuanced discussion is so very far removed from the knee-jerk accusations levelled against them. These are not two white supremacists, far from it, and pretty much all of the concerns that people raise in this thread are dealt with in the talk. I seriously recommend listening, I can’t imagine why, if you wanted to discuss this, you wouldn’t want to hear what an author means directly from their own mouth. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2017, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/96 "2017-04-24T16:15:27Z")
> [@Ale](#): > > Can you point to anything said in that podcast that supports your characterization of them? If I watched hours-long videos every time an OP tells me to, I wouldn’t have time for anything else. In that post I was just making a general point about why people often bring up this topic. ---
**Author:** ![Ale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@Ale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ale)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2017, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/97 "2017-04-24T16:20:36Z")
> [@Richard\_Parker](#): > > So, I think you agree with me on (1). But it’s hard to tell, because you keep changing the details and not realizing that the details are what I’m claiming. > > And you seem to not understand or have forgotten the significance of (2). So, not sure where to go with that. > > Maybe calm down and re-read the whole exchange? No, I don’t agree with you on 1), I thought it was quite evident I don’t because I said you are completely wrong about that. :rolleyes: How do you reconcile your claim that _“The idea of races of humans consisting of all the people from entire continents who share traits did not exist until around the beginning of the eighteenth century”_ with, for instance, the last cite I provided? [_“During the Middle Ages, believing Jews, Christians, and Muslims incorrectly considered Ham to be the ancestor of **all Africans**. Noah’s curse on Canaan as described in Genesis began to be misinterpreted by some scholars in Europe as having caused **visible racial characteristics in all of Ham’s offspring, notably black skin.** ” "the **sixth-century** Babylonian Talmud says that “the descendants of Ham are **cursed by being Black** and [it] depicts Ham as a sinful man and his progeny as degenerates.”_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamitic#Concept_of_the_Curse_of_Ham) Meaning, long before the 18th century people from Africa were already being lumped together based on visible racial characteristics, that on itself disproves your claim that _“The idea of races of humans consisting of all the people from entire continents who share traits did not exist until around the beginning of the eighteenth century”_. Furthermore your claim that it was the European and American slavers who first came up with the idea of using that expression of racism as a justification for the slave trade is clearly disproved further down: [_“Some Arab slave traders used the account of Noah and Ham in the Bible to justify Negro (Zanj) slavery, and **later European and American Christian traders and slave owners adopted a similar argument.** ”_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamitic#Concept_of_the_Curse_of_Ham) ---
**Author:** ![Ale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@Ale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ale)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2017, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/98 "2017-04-24T16:34:52Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > If I watched hours-long videos every time an OP tells me to, I wouldn’t have time for anything else. > In that post I was just making a general point about why people often bring up this topic. Fair enough, you don’t want to spend time to hear what they say; is it too much then to put to your consideration that you shouldn’t besmirch them over what you think they said but didn’t bother to hear either? ---
**Author:** ![Ale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@Ale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ale)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2017, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/99 "2017-04-24T16:37:43Z")
> [@Novelty\_Bobble](#): > > I have to agree with \*\*Ale \*\*here. I’m listening to the podcast now and the characterisations of Harris and Murray seem to bear no relation to what they actually say and the conclusions they draw.Their carefully nuanced discussion is so very far removed from the knee-jerk accusations levelled against them. These are not two white supremacists, far from it, and pretty much all of the concerns that people raise in this thread are dealt with in the talk. > > I seriously recommend listening, I can’t imagine why, if you wanted to discuss this, you wouldn’t want to hear what an author means directly from their own mouth. The ironic thing is that the opening of the podcast is Harris talking about the problem of forming an opinion about a person (and a book) based only on the uncharitable characterizations of its detractors without checking the source to form one’s own opinion. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2017, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/100 "2017-04-24T16:38:55Z")
> [@Ale](#): > > You know, if you would have listened to that podcast you’d have heard that Harris and Murray made exactly the same point you did on your second paragraph and your characterization of what they think in your third paragraph is absolutely wrong. > > [Around the 1:08:50 point they say it plainly:](https://youtu.be/Y1lEPQYQk8s?t=1h7m55s) > > \*Harris- The differences between groups are not so large that there isn’t a substantial overlap between them for every trait we care about so that given the variance between individuals will be much higher than the variance between groups again for any trait we care about but specially what we are talking now about intelligence. It would actually be irrational to read much into group differences… > > Murray- Exactly right. > > Harris- so that the truth is I learn nothing about a person’s intelligence simply by being told that he is black or white or asian, you still need to treat people as individuals and you make it absolutely clear in your book that given the overlap in these bell curves there will be many many blacks who are far more intelligent than most whites, so this is again it all comes back to honestly evaluating individuals. > > Murray- I emphatically agree with everything you just said.\* > > Can you point to anything said in that podcast that supports your characterization of them? That sounds like a fig leaf once one considers that they are still allowing many to justify their \*\*prejudging \*\*of \*\*most \*\*people based on superficial differences. > **[The Bell Curve](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve)** > > The Bell Curve (ISBN 9780029146736) is a highly controversial 1994 book by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray.\[2\] It purports to show that intelligence is dispositive in the trajectory of each person's life, and that can be used to predict such... > [@](#): > > The “cognitive elite” > > Drawing on author Charles Murray’s background in statistics and Richard Herrnstein’s background in psychology, the book uses a variety of analyses of such factors as crime rate, pre-teen pregnancy and income in order to point to the success of what the authors call the “cognitive elite.”[2] Such claims are already suspect, as many experts argue that the correlation between low performance on IQ tests and poverty is indeed causal, but it’s the poverty that causes the poor IQ and not the other way around.[3] The book was also criticized for its selective use of research on education.[4] > > According to the authors, the heritability of IQ is about 60%. This constitutes one of the foundations of their argument that society is becoming more stratified by intelligence and the “cognitive elite” is separating itself from the rest of society’s rabble through (self-)selective breeding. In his review, philosopher Ned Block noted that Herrnstein and Murray conflated genetic determination with heritability. He also demonstrates that differences in a trait that is 100% heritable within a group may not be at all heritable between groups.[5] Recent advances in genome wide association studies have begun to discover some genetic basis for educational attainment and cognitive ability.[6][7][8] > > The public furor over the book led the American Psychological Association to assemble a task force on the validity of intelligence testing. The APA reaffirmed the basic usefulness of IQ testing, but pointed out a number of shortcomings and limitations in the way it was used by Herrnstein and Murray.[9] One issue the APA review notes with using IQ testing is the “Flynn effect,” in which IQ scores were found to have been rising over the 20th century by psychologist James Flynn.[10] This is a rather ironic criticism, as The Bell Curve actually coined the term “Flynn effect,” though the authors claim that the effect merely represented rising IQ scores but not an increase in general intelligence (“g”) and that the “real” average IQ of the American population was declining. One wonders that if IQs are not a real measure of intelligence, then what exactly is Murray basing his claims on? At any rate, the fact that the nature and cause(s) of the Flynn effect are still unknown and debated to this day. > > Further tests of verbal ability have also challenged the book on this front in terms of its claims of increased “cognitive sorting.”[11] In addition, the claims of “cognitive sorting” often commit one of the basic fallacies of eugenics: Conflating genotype and phenotype. The overarching thesis concerning the “cognitive elite” boils down to their deep concern that the smarties are being out-bred by the idiots. This was a perpetual claim of the eugenicists of the 19th and 20th centuries, most famously summed up in Cyril Kornbluth’s short story “The Marching Morons” and recycled in the movie Idiocracy.[12] > \*\* > Murray would later revisit this foreseen fate - a division between the elite and the rest - in his 2010 Coming Apart: The State of White America,[13] which argues that a vast cultural gap has appeared between wealthy and lower-class Caucasians, deriving in no small part from these groups’ respective genetic inheritances.\*\* > Far more crankish, though, was The Bell Curve’s further conclusion in the third and fourth parts of the book that innate intelligence plays an important role in the different socioeconomic statuses of differing ethnic groups in the United States. Arguing that intelligence is inherited in large part, and that the average intelligence of different ethnic groups can thus be assessed, the book then concludes that different ethnic groups have varying levels of intelligence, and certain groups are poor or unfortunate mainly because they are not as smart as others.[2] (Many early, knee-jerk criticisms in the media latched onto this point without addressing the rest of the book.) > > Further compounding the errors made earlier on, this section of the book rather clearly hearkened back to the long tradition of “scientific racism.” Herrnstein and Murray here rely on the biologically invalid concept of race, building on their already shaky neo-eugenic foundation of the “cognitive elite.” A Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) review noted: > “”Anyone who flipped through the footnotes and bibliography of Murray and Herrnstein’s book could see that there was something screwy about their sources. And there is hardly a proposition in their book that had not been thoroughly debunked more than a decade ago by Stephen Jay Gould’s classic work on the pseudoscience behind eugenics, The Mismeasure of Man.[14][15] > > 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.[16] 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.[17] 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. Incidentally the bolded part points to yet again Murray going the classic pseudo-scientist way, not going to peer review, but yet again to the “I made a book” argument. I see it as a misguided effort to rescue his sorry legacy, as making the genetics cause poverty inside the races too. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052.md?page=6)