Interesting podcast conversation between Sam Harris and Charles Murray (of "Bell Curve" fame)

The BBQ Pit
1341

Ah, the demonizing. Somehow, despite all the liberals and progressives among my friends, and at events like the recent Secular Social Justice conference that I attended, I’ve never been demonized, nor have I ever seen white men demonized by any beyond a minuscule and completely marginalized fringe.

But then journalists talk about a thing and don’t focus on what your want them to focus on, so obviously they were demonizing white men. The all encompassing and all powerful evil of political correctness strikes again!

And of course you were victorious. You’re such a special victorious boy, yes you are! Always winning, like a tiger. Such a good boy, you little winner, you!

1342

:rolleyes: After finding and listening to the relevant part of this sketchily-cited podcast, I figured out that what you’re on about is the leaked resignation letter from former Academy Governor Bill Mechanic, where he alleges that “one Governor even went as far as suggesting we don’t admit a single white male to the Academy, regardless of merit”.

Pending further information about this alleged “suggestion” and the context in which it was allegedly made, I suggest you untwist your panties and relax, instead of getting all wound up about cryptic snippets of gossip, hearsay and unsupported claims.

Nope. Non-Hispanic white men currently make up about 30% of the US population, whereas black and Hispanic/Latino people account for about 13% and about 18%, respectively. Americans of Asian and multiracial ethnicity constitute about another 8%, with non-Hispanic white women being the remaining 31%. Perhaps you were mistakenly counting Hispanic white men twice, once in the “white men” category and once in the “Hispanic”?

1343

No, I used the same source to make sure my claim was true (although “about the same” would also be true). Add 12.6% black to 17.1% Hispanic, then subtract the 0.3% who are black and Hispanic so you don’t double count them, and that’s 29.4%. So that’s already less than 30% (and white men are likely closer to 31%, given that “Non-Hispanic whites make up 62.6% of the country’s population” and women only slightly outnumber men:

I never said anything about Asians, people of mixed race, etc., so I’m not sure why you brought up those numbers.

Furthermore, the Hispanic population skews young and the non-Hispanic white population skews old (not sure about the black population, but I seriously doubt it skews older than the white population, particularly given African American health challenges, which are BTW at least partly a result of racial discrimination in the health care system). So since I used “men” and “women” rather than “males” and “females”, I think my claim is pretty safe. Do you concede this one? (Let’s all remember that you nitpicked me, incorrectly, not vice versa.)

Andy, I am of course talking about the culture of online spaces, not at meatspace conferences. (I double dog dare you to assert that online culture doesn’t matter.)

Another example in this vein is Star Trek: Discovery. The status quo as we find it at the end of the season is that [spoiler] there are no characters who are straight white males. Zero. This radical state of affairs was effectively obscured for most of the season by the fact that the captain of the ship was a straight white male. But then he was revealed to be an evil Terran (long story) and stand-in for Trump (https://youtu.be/d4j_I_zvER8), who died and was therefore absent for the final two episodes. All this on CBS, the most “red state” of networks!

Now there’s not even a transporter room guy, or helmsman who occasionally says “yes, Captain”, who could possibly be a straight white guy if we knew more about him. There are no white guys even in the background of big group shots like speaking at the Federation Council.

I don’t have a problem with that per se; it’s kind of an interesting twist, although I’d prefer they have a few as side characters. But TWC doesn’t stop and acknowledge “hey, this is kinda wild and pretty cool”. They just gripe about “Bury your gays”, because one of the (multiple) gay characters died.

And if they mention anything about the race/gender of the cast, it’s just mockery of “alt-righters” because they “can’t handle seeing a major character who is a woman of color”. If you read their comments but didn’t watch the show, you would have to feel pretty sure there were a variety of diverse characters including white men, rather than just one white guy who is openly gay.[/spoiler]

1344

:dubious: In fact, so much so that the differences in counting nearly fall within rounding error. Sorry, I thought you were trying to claim something along the lines of “white men are a significantly larger demographic than all blacks and Hispanics combined”, not merely “white men are so close in numbers to all blacks and Hispanics combined that they might even still be more numerous by a few tenths of a percentage point”.

Because I didn’t understand why you were comparing white men only to the subset of non-whites who are black or Hispanic. Now, of course, I see that it was because if you had compared the numbers of American white men to those of all nonwhite Americans, there would have been no way for you to get the former group even close to the “more numerous” label.

Sure, if you’re retroactively insisting on excluding minors from the gender categories, I willingly concede that you successfully manipulated your choice of categories and descriptors to mislead your readers about the nature of your statements. Well done, if that’s the sort of achievement you’re after. (Note, however, that excluding minors will depress the overall male/female ratio, since the proportion of males to females is higher among children than adults.)

1345

There was nothing retroactive, nor anything misleading. I made a very clear and specific statement:

It’s not my fault if someone doesn’t know “men” and “women” do not include “boys” and “girls”; nor if someone doesn’t get that “black men, black women, Hispanic women, and Hispanic men” includes those four categories only. Note also that I didn’t pull a trick where white boys were included but black and Hispanic children were not. Furthermore, nothing in that post pertained to children: there are no child characters on the TV show, and children are (I assume) not eligible to become Academy members.

Nor was this some kind of random, insensible collection to compare against: I was using a common rhetorical device of “larger than next X combined”, in this case being the next two Census racial/ethnic categorizations. There is no expectation, when playing that language game, that X must be “all”.

I could have added the adjective “slightly” before “more”. But as long as I didn’t use “much” or “significantly”, it’s still kosher. I think most people understand that when someone uses this rhetorical device to kind of surprise people with how numerous a group is, or how much money is spent on something, and follow it with specifically named categories (not “everything/everyone else combined”), that you have probably stacked up those numbers such as to make the claim true, but not by a huge margin.

Face it: you misread my assertion, incorrectly disputed it, and are now trying to blame me for it. If I pulled something like that, the hoots of derision would make this place sound (metaphorically) like a monkey house at feeding time.

1346

Yup, I already acknowledged that and congratulated you on it.

1347

Huh. Funny, the only intervening post I saw from you was one in which you said I “retroactively” changed my claim (I didn’t), and that I was being purposely misleading (I wasn’t).

1348

Yup, that’s the one:

There you are: apology, concession, and congratulations.

1349

The only gaslighter I have seen has been you.

As this post shows:

https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=20906929&postcount=1232

So, besides not dealing with what ratavatar quoted you also avoided answering the questions from EE there.

You completely failed to understand that even the ones you cited came back also to point out that while poor and minority students do get just a bit more in resources that is only when comparing same districts, so when looking at most districts the point from EE and others is clear:

1350

Whatever you say, Gretchen.

1351

Kimstu, it’s still bullshit to say I was intentionally being misleading. I was not. Nor do I believe there is any lack of clarity in what I wrote, which was very precise. In fact, intentionally so, as you acknowledge—but not for the purpose of misleading, only to make my assertion unimpeachable.

Disappointing.

The failure to understand is yours, GIGO. I do believe in this case that you are sincere in your misunderstanding, so I’ll show you what happened again. (If this comes up again after this post has slid up off the page, maybe I’ll go ‘round about it again if necessary, but not for a while as it is incredibly boring to relitigate the same thing over and over.)

Here is the post where EE quoted me and responded “I simply don’t believe this”:

https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=20902345&postcount=1180

It’s right there in what EE quoted: “in the same district”. That was, again, very intentional.

If you can’t parse the specificity of a claim, that’s not my fault, people. It’s not in tiny fine print or arcane language. “In the same district”. Plain as can be.

1352

And that was not dealing with the post I quoted, it shows that the point was expanded then. And you continue to cowardly avoid answering to the questions made.

Like all your points in this thread, they are grossly incomplete on purpose. The whole truth is that you were misleading in that reply because others did notice that concentrating on the same districs willfully ignored the big picture and you still are.

1353

You or anyone else was free to respond “That may be true in a narrow sense, but these other factors are more germane”, etc. Not “I simply don’t believe this is true”.

Furthermore, this plaint is pretty rich given that the cites from your side have been incredibly narrow, leaving out funding streams like SpEd, nutrition programs, preschool, or even all federal spending!

1354

Here’s the claim you made:

“black schoolchildren have significantly more money spent on their education than do white children in the same district.”

And here’s the important part of the sentence you posted as your “proof” of that claim:

“…not all districts spend more money on these students—in the most unequal districts, they receive between $300-$500 less per pupil.”

Now, you demonstrated from the embarrassing Wikipedia incident that you lack the intellectual capacity to make it to the end of a sentence, but I want you to try. If you do, you’ll find that your own cite proves you wrong. I guess being too stupid to realize that your own cite disproves you is “winning” to someone of your intellectual caliber.

And hey, I couldn’t be bothered to read your latest interaction with Kimstu, but you probably shouldn’t be so hostile to the only person in this thread who hasn’t basically told you to your face that you’re a fucking idiot.

1355

Not really. As noted, I actually looked at what the researcher you cited did tell us later.

So, even the researcher in your cite expanded his narrow point.

Also of notice: in the quote I made FROM YOU, you willfully dropped your “very intentional” point that ‘it was just about the same districts’ when you tell us later that still “more money is spent on them” when that was not the case anymore (or an inoperative statement as a Nixon aid did say), as pointed by others and by your own “very intentional” misleading/incomplete statement.

1356

Oh GIGO, you’re talking gibberish again. Also note that your buddy EE is again engaging in his/her predilection for posting quoted text (but without using Dope-style quoteboxes, perhaps to skirt quoting rules) with no links to back the quotes up. In an earlier case, I Googled the source and found that it excluded federal money, nutrition programs, etc. Even EE was forced to grudgingly retract it, although like Kimstu s/he still tried to blame it on me somehow. :dubious:

1357

Fie to that, you are an even bigger coward for resorting to the now tired “I do not understand you” when you already showed that indeed you can follow.

Again, even you are aware of how incomplete and misleading is to just stick to your say so of “just the districts” when even the researcher you quoted came a few months later expanding his point, comparing just the schools within a district does miss the big picture and you continue to do so and on top of that you clearly dropped your 'just within the districts" misleading half point to continue with your inoperative statement that implies that all minority or poor students are getting more funding. .

1358

I’m not the one who’s inconsistent. Some of your posts are intelligible, others less so. Sometimes you bite off more than you can chew, linguistically. I suspect you do well with complex sentences in your native tongue, which often leads you into temptation to use them in English…and the results are just not what you are aiming for. I’ll again suggest that you try being more “telegraphic”. Keep your sentences under a dozen words. Your last sentence above contains 88! (I use long sentences myself at times, but not in French.)

This is offered as sincere advice, not as an insult.

1359

To sum up: Political correctness is responsible for anything bad. White men are being demonized and the proof is that NPR hosts talked about a story and focused on something other than what SlackerInc thought they should. Disagreeing with SlackerInc is being a “dirty gaslighter”. And white supremacism is just fine as long as it’s similar to the paternal attitude of colonialists.

Did I leave anything out?

1360

Duly noted then, but it is also noted that you continue to be a coward.

And again, you did miss a lot about what your researcher said about funding:

So, when you came back **willfully **ignoring what your cite also did say, then your statement about “The fact that they don’t have similar needs is my whole point: they have greater needs because they come to school with lower aptitude. So more money is spent on them” Your **whole **point there was already incomplete, misleading and stuck in your confirmation bias. IOW, poppycock.