I’m 3 years late in finding this, but Michael so brilliantly articulated why Sam Harris is wrong about Murray. Previous to that interview I’d been a Harris fan, and after listening to it I just couldn’t respect him anymore. So sad to hear Michael’s no longer with us. Thanks for preserving his thoughts here.
it was the masha gessen interview for me. sam harps on islam, masha is like 'i'm queer, and fear the american evangelicals far more than i fear islamists.' sam dismissed her experience, which was laughable to me. dude made assumptions about queer folk, was contradicted by a queer person, and then doubled down. ok, captain rational.
Poverty also reduces scores on standardized intelligence tests. Poverty causes an estimated 14 point drop on IQ tests and that's just 1 factor. It's not like black Americans have been systemically kept in poverty and economic destitution for 400 years though, right?
or poor people see no use for the questions and metrics used in an IQ test bc they dont actually relate to the ways a poor person has to use their intelligence
RIP Michael, I'm from the UK and had just found him. So sad. I just can't believe these IQ arguements exist in the 21st century! Here's an example of how stupidly inaccurate they are, and What Michael is saying is completely right. on entry to university at the age of 30 I was given a dyslexia test, it had been thought I was dyslexic from school. I was practically illiterate when I left at 15. I avoided reading and writing where ever possible for many years. I struggled to find and hold down jobs. So if I had of taken the test at that point i expect i would have been in the lowest percentiles. Anyway when I got to around 25 I started getting interested in philosophy, politics etc so I started to read a little. I got to a point where I thought I'd give university a go. I found a course that accepted people with little or no qualifications. I was so nervous about the IQ test , I decided to do a high quality test the night before online as I did not know what to expect , I got a average score, but the next day, because I understood what the test was about, the kind of things that would be on there I ended up with a score in the top 3%. It was a 25 point jump in 24 hours. From that point I knew it was b.s.
Dog Hussy same here I am from the uk in north London ,came across the Michael brooks two years ago ,always looked forward to his pod cast Simply outstanding ,devastating sad to here of his passing ,just a great ,intelligent ,insightful soul , His voice ,knowledge and unique approach is so needed for these tumultuous times With the videos and his exposing of the Ben shapiros ,Sam harris, tucker Carlson ,Dave Rubin etc was extremely important and still is He left a brilliant legacy and will never be forgotten Rip Michael
i'm not a psychologist, but i';m an engineer. i understand numbers deeply. iq tests measure a specific set of skills. someone who doesnt practice those skills wont get a good score. someone who does, probably will. i would expect people from countries that are ravaged by famine and poverty to score very low.....when all of your time is spent on just trying to survive, practicing the skills measured by iq tests is not practical at all.
@@sabin97 definitely. That what is so frustrating, it's outdated nonsense. But the fact that Peterson and others put value on the test , just shows what bad actors they are.
@@sabin97 I understand what you have said. I know it can be used to measure a skill set but the fact is it is often used to indicate difference, winners and losers. Like you have pointed out, those who are brought up in difficult environments, those do not have cultural capital will not score well generally. People with bad intentions are willing to use this, in the UK it has started to rear it's head in political discourse. The conservative party are quite routed in this idea of intellectual difference, it runs through their education policy. This is why our education pedegogy remains routed in Victorian tradition. I also understand that Peterson uses disclaimer that if we understand IQ we can better understand the issues people face. But essentially his main ideology is essential intelligence is a thing. You can argue that it is, but the intent tells the story.
@ Sam has interviewed plenty of people, many with thoughtful, well-researched, insightful commentary and discussions. Any Seder guest > Murray, intellectually or by any other metric.
I felt when he repeatedly asked Murray why even do this study in the first place was good enough to basically call.murray out. He made sure to repeat several times even when Murray avoided the question. Sure he could have done more but it wasn't a debate.
@@kevinscott9745 Not challenging Murray at any opportunity is abdication of responsibility. If it's not a debate, is it journalism? If yes, you need to challenge Murray. If you're not questioning and challenging Murray when you have him in public view, you're enabling him -- and basically just making propaganda.
You know what's ironic? Things like "you're misinterpreting me", "you're taking that out of context", etc are exactly what religious people keep saying to people like Sam Harris.
If the subject is New Atheists becoming their enemy, I think the "radical leftist academia/media brainwashing our youth with the SJW" takes the cake. Sub in evolution for SJW, classic creationist.
Harris's work helped me leave fundamentalist Christianity, but this whole thing with Murray and then with Klein really disabused me of the notion that he was a level-headed, calm, serious, data-focussed intellect.
look at the response this video has gotten. also consider almost all voters are fans and similar opinions as the maker. this video is garbage, embarrassing nonsense. what about that whole thing makes you think hes none of those things? these people are brainlessly going on and on about how blacks are affected by this, spouting unfounded insults about racism hate and being illogical, instead of doing what science does and having a conversation about the data. theyre turning off their brain and screaming. how is sam the one with those faults and not these people?
@@wasdwasdedsf Wrong. You're not even a fan of the show so how could you possibly know anything about who's liking or disliking this video. Every video the MR puts out has almost 95% of likes except for oh coincidence the ones about Peterson or Harris or Rubin, why? Because their fans get so triggered by receiving criticism and they can't stand that someone would mock their little heroes so they start disliking without even watching it. You need to get out of your bubble and entertain the possibility that maybe Harris...you know, it's wrong. His atheism stuff was fine years ago and the only good thing he does now is the meditation thing, but that's about it. He's misinformed in virtually every other topic.
@@lemartin93 "Every video the MR puts out has almost 95% of likes except for oh coincidence the ones about Peterson or Harris or Rubin, why?"cause its insanely faulty. how could you know whos liking and disliking the video? do fans get a special fanpage where they can see who liked which video? "You need to get out of your bubble and entertain the possibility that maybe Harris...you know, it's wrong" you do that by showing arguments. funny this video has this insanity rating usually only reserved for embarrassing videos made by retards or insane patheitc conspiracy theory videos. yet i should get out of my bubble. whos living in a bubble? maybe you should entertain the idea that you may, in fact, be living in a bubble. "He's misinformed in virtually every other topic." sounds like some solid evidence. people seems to post things like this but not say much else. whats the problem with his and others AI hypothesis? whats the problem with blacks being less smart? you do realise that by what that whole thing is about, whites should be fucking fuming and furious? we have 3 billion asians that are our master race. and what is it like 800 million blacks that are below us? thats not putting us in a very great light. but of course, its just for some magical reason none of you have any sources of that theyre just hating the color black. theyre perfectly fine with a yellow tint. of course this would need to be the case that they try to put them down for their iq, which would mean that they value iq, which should make them hide and not want to disclose evidence about asians... because if they dont value iq, the whole blacks having lower iq isnt much of an insult... its almost as if theyre just discussing data... and you clowns freaking out about arbritrary things (identity politics or whatever it is, im new to this, i used to only be interested in actual science and not circuses). its almost as if different genes leads to different things... blacks can be insanely much better at us at being athletes... but looking at data of intelligence makes you the devil. so you want them to be superior to us as athletes yet a ssmart as us at the same time? feels familiar...? you sure were the racists and not you people against us whites? that morality isnt a real thing, so far as it means anything is to how actions can affect the total amount of wellbeing in the universe? see this is how you form arguments, i wonder if any of people like you have guts to respond
I saw this same lack of judgment with Harris on The Joe Rogan podcast that featured Hannibal Buress when they started talking about police brutality . That shit was frustrating to listen to.
J spoolz. I really can’t imagine a person that listens to that podcast with Harris and buress with an open mind and doesn’t come out of it thinking “Wow Sam really made buress look like an idiot.” Not even because Sam was trying to undercut buress in any way. In fact Sam was being quite polite. But it seemed to take all but half of sams iq to show how underdeveloped buress’ ideas were. Not trying to be mean but please think through other people’s ideas honestly and thoroughly before making random claims like this one.
@@BingoBangoB0NGO8 I get what you're trying to say, but I have to disagree and I consider myself a level-headed person (I know, I'm biased, LOL). Hannibal was trying to make a point, but in addition to not being a skilled nor professional debater (like Sam), he was also inebriated. The point Hannibal was trying to make was that not all *lived experiences* can be quantified with data and, therefore, data can be skewed. Black people have been giving accounts of police brutality, entrapment, mysterious deaths of black people who had cantankerous run-ins with police, etc for literally centuries. Yet, many of these cases are just now gaining credibility due to the advent of the camera phone. Cases such as Emmit Till highlight how the black community knew that the supposed victim was lying, yet she only confessed on her death bed. Sam is a very intelligent man. He often makes the case for skewed statistics when it serves his purposes, yet with Hannibal he acted like he doesn't understand that racial statistics, in particular, have been shown to contain bias. Sam *appeared* to take it easy on Hannibal because he knew it wasn't a fair fight, but because he also knew that he could basically say anything and Hannibal would have neither the knowledge nor language to refute anything he stated.
I get the distinct feeling, having listened to Harris quite a bit during this time, he was looking for a black person just to say ‘there is no racism by white cops in policing’. I think that was typified when Sam eagerly made his oft repeated point ‘some black people are shot by black cops!’, to which Burgess replied ‘I never said anything about white cops!’ (which he didn’t, he was discussing policing in general), “I’m talking about harassment from cops in general’. Even Rogan laughingly admitted Hannibal had a point. Either way these guys who are so desperate to prove racism doesn’t exist just come off as suspect.
Sam doesn't fetishize race and IQ. He has no interest in the subject. He had Murray on because of Middlebury. He's said repeatedly on the podcast and in his exchange with Ezra that he doesn't care for the topic. He even asked Charles "why study this at all?" and has said there may be things not worth looking into.
philpott kentucky Or he engages in these sorts of discussions because of his broader interest in people’s inability to do so without automatically believing in the worst of their findings. Just because he’s not foaming at the mouth with outrage and shouting down anyone who holds an unpopular/unshared viewpoint doesn’t automatically indicate tacit agreement. Maybe, just maybe, he actually means what he says.
Cezariusz 88 What does Sam’s interest or lack thereof in studying this have to do with “his fans” talking about it? Outside of his podcast with Charles Murray, when has he spent any significant time discussing it?
Cezariusz 88 The fact is it isn’t Sam who’s so obsessed with this topic, it’s guys like these clowns who use Sam, JP and others to get clicks. They talk about Sam talking about it way more than Sam’s actually talked about it.
Exactly. Sam Harris says, "It's not to say we're absolutely at war with Muslims." And Omar Duwaji quotes him as saying, "We're absolutely at war with all Muslims." Leaving out the "It's not to say" part. And these Sam Harris Fanboys accuse people like Omar Duwaji of quote mining and taking Harris's statements out of context. Simply ridiculous. Where do they get these quote mining accusations from? It's unbelievable. The very thought. Incredible.
Well when he clearly explains his positions and people continue to take him out of context, what recourse does he have, accept the out of context characterizations he has thrown at him?
The hell they don't. I've seen it myself. There's that time when Harris says "With all the Islamic terrorism in Europe, the average guy is gonna ask, 'Why the fuck do I want these people immigrating to my country.'" And they quote mined him to say, "Why the fuck do I want these people immigrating to my country." That might not be a big difference to you but I think that's a gross violation of the viewer's trust. After a few events like that you begin to realize what kind of regressive leftists these nuts are. There a bunch of authoritarians who won't report the facts and let you decide. They have this self appointed Orwellian role as the information filters. They think you're an idiot who has to be lead by a ring through your nose. I wouldn't put them in the same category as the right wing nuts because their capacity to do harm is minimal. You're not going to have to drink arsenic laced water because of these left wing regressives.
hi! sorry to necro this thread. I don't speak for anyone, but the problem is that people (for example, some on the left) use racial group differences in outcomes as a basis for arguing that there is a significant amount of discrimination against folks. I don't think Sam agrees with me, but I think that many individualists seek to study differences in groups specifically to show that there are other reasons for differences than significant, ongoing discrimination. The goal of learning the differences in averages would be that we can then go back to treating people as individuals based on the content of their character.
I enjoy Harris's podcast, when i see a guest i'm interested in, he genuinely explores ideas and subject matters, but on policies like torture, racial profiling, or IQ, Harris's "intellectual ideas" are often amateurish. Many of his intellectual contributions, like AI or religion, are lifted from others, often books anyone can read, but most folks don't because it's easier to have them filtered, which is understandable given people lead busy lives, but before they know it they're a devotee in a personality cult. Folks need to filter Harris, just as he filters others, and diversify their sources, and occasionally pick up a book.
why would you bother with him at all? The only thing you get from listening to him is the chance that he'll trojan horse some absolute bullshit to you.
I agree. I like to listen to Sam Harris. If someone else doesn't like it, so what? I like that Harris for example is into psychedelics and that he cares about the environment at is one of the most critical to Donald Trump. At the same time he has other more conservative ideas. I haven't really thought about his shortcomings. Anyways, I listen to different kind of podcasts and ideas.
I used to be a fan of Sam Harris, but he's gone right off the god damned deep end and I cannot abide his uncritical endorsement of "scientific" racism through that hack who wrote the bell curve. And don't even get me started on his fans, the one thing I will say in his defense is he's expressed a degree of horror when exposed to some of the shit his fans say, Dawkins as well, but I have to wonder just what they were expecting. When they decide to criticize Trump and their rabid alt-right fans get pissed, of course you have those people as fans, you spend half your time telling women to get back into the kitchen and criticizing the left for being insufficiently paranoid about Muslims as if they are a threat to domestic American politics. As a left wing anti theist, I find the alt-light centerlord mentality in movement atheism utterly appalling. These people wouldn't know rational thought if they fell through a hole in the fabric of space time and landed on Socrate's head during a debate with Glaucon.
Giuliano Taverna only demeaning thing I’m aware being said which I would cast as misogyny was Dawkins dear. Muslimina letter. Any other examples Of misogyny I missed from Sam and Dawkins ? ( in reference to your comment about getting back in the kitchen )
the muslima letter was the opposite of misogyny. it was a very well deserved criticism of "elevatorgate" in which a guy asked a girl he liked if she wanted to have sex(yes, an invitation for "coffee in my room" is an invitation to have sex), she said no, and they went their separate ways. sadly after the fact the guy got labeled almost as a rapist. for the crime of inviting someone to have sex and not even insisting when they said no. and i find it odd that people seem to try to associate harris with "iq realism" when he has explicitly said that trying to compare iq among "race" is scientifically invalid(i.e. he rejects the idea).....i'm not defending any of his views(specially when it comes to israel) but if find it odd that they try to associate him with something he has categorically, and unambiguously rejected.
I have it on authority that dawkins blacklists feminists from appearing at events he's at. That is to say if there are feminists he refuses to attend, so the venue bans the feminists. Its a pattern of behavior, I mean just look at their reaction, (or lack thereof) to the Krauss sex scandal, never mind the Michael Shermer one from several years ago. And that kid who made the Toy Clock dawkins cringe-worthy rant on that just reeked of xenophobic bigotry. And mind you I'm still a fan of Dawkins, on the whole he does a lot of good work, and I even met him in person recently at a book signing. That said he has very glaring flaws that I wish he would address. But I'm afraid he's too set in his ways to change on that. When it comes to Harris I'm way less forgiving, Dawkins would never interview a bigot without challenging them. And I certainly don't think he himself would ever assault anyone. Really, its the new atheists fanboys and the youtube shitlords I have the biggest problem with, but when it comes to the big names, if they want to impress me, and leftist atheists in general, they would denounce these people as the vile enemies of reason they are.
That Clock boy kid was a total scam artist. Watch The Cult of Dusty's take on it for a full exegesis. The kid's father is tight with the genocidal dictator of Sudan. th-cam.com/video/9UGLM31S6II/w-d-xo.html.
The funny thing with IQ tests is they cover a very narrow intellectual skill set you can practice and improve to some extent. I can get over 150 regularly having learnt pattern seeking skills etc. However,. I'd suggest discipline, planning, commitment, focus, compassion, opportunity, experience, self awareness and people skills are perhaps more important than IQ test proficiency when it comes to achievement.
chillax1969 You can improve if you practice the same IQ test over and over but if they randomize the test structure it’s been shown that improvements don’t happen much. Some things improve it to small extents like being in good shape, not binging on drugs and doing certain exercises to keep your mind in “shape” You are right though that if you have a lowish IQ it’s not the end of the world. There are other skills that you can have that will make you successful in life, I have first hand experience with this.
the general point though is that IQ has been shown to be a) a good indicator of other intelligences and b) a good indicator of success later in life i'm not saying this because i back Murray's point. i say it because this is a weak point to argue against Murray with.
Any pure math under grad could easily get the highest score, it can be taught. One of my teachers explained how he practiced a shit load to get into mensa. Iq isn't fixed.
"“Fan” is exactly the right word to use in today’s media environment." Look at nearly any Bolsonaro video on TH-cam and you'll find oceans of fans cheering for this Trump-like monster- we saw this in fans of Trump in the U.S. as well. How many are simply fascists versus how many are paid shills, bots, or those who have been swept up in the huge amount of anti-Lula/pro-Bolsonaro propaganda that Google and Facebook enabled and that the Brazilian media has pushed ("mainstream media is concentrated in the hands of a few families, which all have goals and interests aligned with the opposition party") for years and especially during Bolsonaro's takeover, is hard to determine. But they definitely look like fans. It's hard for poor people in Brazil to access independent news or find non anti-govt/pro-Bolsonaro content.
As a black man and an atheist....Sam Harris is incredibly frustrating to deal with. I can't appreciate his views on religion because he distracts me with his racially suspect narratives. I'm 32 years old and I'm already so tired of my perceived intellect being juxtaposed to my blackness.
I've got some years on you, and as a fellow poc, all I can say is it doesn't get any better. Looks up at shithead Simon Farre for prime illustrative example.
+Adam Smith - Sorry to stick my nose in on your conversation but, if you don't mind the suggestion, I would resist letting Simon hijack the conversation you started with the OP. If your conversation was about how people use race as a lazy shortcut to make guesses about another person's intelligence then continue that conversation. If Simon wants to have a different conversation about "everything being racist"--and then use that as a spring board to talk about "kemetic science racists"--I'd let him have that conversation with himself in the comments. Just my opinion, obviously.
Another thing I would mention Michael is that people believed the scientific community had more of a complete understanding of genetics. You mentioned epigenetics, which is good but scientists are discovering new epigenetic modifications to genes pretty often and are finding new effects they have as well. The whole picture of genetics right now is maybe a 30% completed puzzle.
The way I understand it is that things a person does in their lives do have an effect of which genes are expressed but not what their genes are. So the change is in the person and just needs a stimulus to activate it. I have a very shallow understanding of epigenetics though.
Center Progressive your generally right but the characteristics we exhibit largely have to do with the extent of expression. For example male pattern baldness. It is genetic but some people have those genes more highly expressed than others and lose their hair at an earlier age or more quickly (this is obviously a bit of a generalisation). In terms of epigenetics yea things you do or experience can change the profile but you also are believed to inherit the epigenetic changes from your parents and each type of epigenetic change influences gene expression differently. For instance you can have methylation and acetylation. They add different chemical groups to your DNA or proteins that cause different activity such as stopping DNA replication past a certain point or preventing/increasing expression of genes or proteins. Point is there are many different methods of these modifications and more are being discovered plus the true effect of each still isn’t 100% understood
Matthew Keates Uh no.... I never said I agree that IQ is hereditary. It isn’t and has been proven not to be, I’m just saying that even scientists don’t have a full grasp of it so anyone trying to say something broad reaching and concrete about genetics being connected to A is likely full of it because it is becoming more and more complicated as discoveries are made.
Aj Meyers it’s not a statistic, just a statement to get across the point that if you hear someone suggest that we know exactly how gene inheritance, epigenetics, etc work, they are likely misinformed. I’m primarily speaking from my experience in research as an RA as well as my Masters research degree in cellular biology. Specifically because I learned about epigenetics in my bachelors degree and when I started my Masters all of a sudden there were 3 new types of epigenetic modification that had been discovered, knowledge on this stuff is evolving all the time, it’s not really possible to determine where our current knowledge base is, however given how quickly we figure out that what we perceived was wrong or not the whole picture it’s safe to say we are no where near knowing how it all works.
Actually you guys are trolling Sam by not engaging his arguments (you never once engage w/ Murray's statements on IQ/race) but only insinuating he's racist or questioning his character/methods of argument. Which is irrational. As progressives, we should be better than that.
Indeed Tripp .... Murray is NOT A RACIST ...nor is Sam. What were seeing here is this guy is being just as anti-science and anti-reason as any Global Warming Rightwing Denier. This is simply a case of not being educated enough to understand what Sam talks about ..so these village idiot's get angry and strike out. It's not Sam's or Murray's fault that right-wing types want to believe what they hear from these intellectuals support their racist beliefs .... any good Democrat (Progressive) should understand that right away ....but we don't get that these days ....
Aaronpolitical, I'm just wondering. It's generally accepted that the Border Collie is the most intelligent breed of dog. Unless you think that's due to "Border Collie Privilege" or that Border Collies simply have cultural advantages over other breeds, that's a pretty clear indication that intelligence is genetic/hereditary in dogs. Is that "junk science" as well, or does that only apply to humans?
+Titus Monk, was Galileo's work peer reviewed? Yeah, I obviously get that the concept of peer review didn't exist at that time. But if it HAD, do you think his work would have been peer reviewed, or peer reviewed positively? Do you not know what would have happened to anyone who DID peer-review his work positively? Well, pretty much the same thing here. It would basically be instant guilt by association for going against the zeitgeist of its time, and some people just don't want to deal with that. Due to the hysterical reaction among your crowd (much of which is evidenced right here), it's almost impossible to get honest debate on this subject.
I listen to what Harris says, and then I listen to what you say he says, and I can't figure out who the f*** you are listening to, because it's clearly not him.
This reminds me of the Affleck / Harris exchange on Overtime...so many over generalize what was said. Harris has pointed out racism is wrong in social interactions. His "racism" is scientific recognition of race disparities is a very different issue...there's a wonderful episode of House where a black doctor (Foreman) prescribes a heart med that is better indicated for blacks to a black patient and the patient flips out...despite there being scientifically substantiated evidence for its superior effects for black persons. This calling Harris racist for recognizing scientifically substantiated disparities in race is completely analogous to that exchange in that episode of House. How about inviting Harris on?
I listened to this twice, and I'm still baffled by the contradictions. He starts by saying (paraphrased) "there's a whole host of cultural and historical reasons blacks score lower on IQ tests that Harris doesn't consider." Then, in the second half, he says, "It is a minority and fringe position to think blacks have lower IQ." I mean, you can't have it both ways. In Harris's podcasts on these issues, he spends enormous amounts of time discussing these socio-historical-cultural issues. And I'm pretty sure he takes a firmly progressive stance on trying to change things to improve IQ for these groups. But how can you propose change to help these groups if you don't first recognize the difference? The most progressive thing we can do is to recognize differences in IQ so that we can get on with it and propose policy changes to help.
I believe Sam brought up the same problematic findings. He said there was no societal benefit in creating a scientific analysis of IQ through the spectrum of race. Not because its not important but it will embolden bigots.
hi! bigots are already currently emboldened, though. People have no problem discriminating both for and against people based on their sex and race. This bigotry is studied, honed, and encouraged in numerous majors in colleges. It's also being embraced by more and more companies. is there anything wrong with battling that? interested in your thoughts :) be well
I'm a lefty who finds Sam to be center left. Sure I disagree with his stance on Hillary over Bernie, but that doesn't make him right wing... He is against colonialism, The Iraq war, against ALL religion, for UBI, for welfare, unions, Medicare for all...please explain what thouroughly right-wing positions he has, please entertain us. Also in his interview with Murray he explicity says why he doesn't think racial IQ research should be done, because he thinks there are unfounded assumption being carried here. He is not for it.... He had Murray because he felt guilty for being a sheep who disavowed the guy cause he didn't like the data... You are such smear merchants.
Sam Harris hates Muslims specifically with a passion, and he’s pro attacking Muslims nations, he dehumanizes Muslims and then says ppl “won’t let him criticize Islam” as if that’s what’s going on. He thinks all Muslims are innately and fundamentally evil no matter wat and yeah that’s fucking bigotry
Sam Harris wrote an article literally titled “IN DEFENSE OF TORTURE!!!” And then got mad when people accused him of defending torture LOL. He said torture should be illegal ... in an article called “in defense of torture” .. that’s who we’re dealing with here lol.
If I were a scholar i would recognize that thst is career suicide as well. But sam expects everyone to act in good faith and scrutinize the article...I'm assuming you didn't read the whole thing and realize it was a thought experiment? Wouldnt blame u if u didn't...
@@parthn4135 thought experiments are for outlining elementary concepts, not for an intervention in the public arena on matters of policy. it's ironic that those complaining that people didn't "read the article" are guilty of the same offense - not reading the article. in the end, Harris comes out "reluctantly" in favor of torture on the basis of a childish hypothetical from an episode of 24. triteness aside, there is nothing new here. for centuries, barbarism has been consistently defended by the well-off with "reluctance."
50% dislikes. Not doing too well. Claims Harris is boring, but 3 minutes into this mind-numbing monologue, the only thing he's said apart from saying "um", "uh" and "like" about a hundred times is that Harris's fans are religious, Harris is boring, and that Harris can't handle criticism. This is incorrect. Like any well-meaning intellectual, Harris welcomes criticism of his ideas. What he doesn't welcome is people calling him a racist or insinuating that he is racist again and again, when he clearly is not. Harris receives death threats and hate mail on a daily basis. Dishonest representations of his work and unintelligent conflation of his criticism of religious ideas with racism have given him a bad reputation all around the world. Absolutely no respect for Sam Seder after hearing this. Much prefer to hear intelligent people discuss important ideas eloquently.
The most effective orientalists were effective and dangerous exactly because they were so knowledgeable about the Eastern cultures they objectified. Sam Harris is ignorant as fuck about the Islam that he proposes to be an expert on.
Actually, I hate to say, many of you don't. I know it has become a meme to say Harris claims persecution upon criticism, but its not true. You guys are only capable of personal attacks, you never engage with the claims or merit of the actual argument. Incapable or unwilling, I'm not sure which is worse...
This is so disingenuous. Neither Harris nor Murray made claims that strong or narrow about race or IQ on the podcast, and he did challenge Murray on several points. Total mischaracterization. Gross.
Harris claims that the Vox article insinuates that Sam is a racist. Ezra says it doesn't. And then I come here and see that this dude read the Vox article the same way Sam did and walked away from it thinking that it exposes Sam's soft bigotry. It seems that Sam is right. The Vox article is providing ammunition to this show to paint Sam as a racist. They inadvertently proved Sam's case.
That's the whole point of all this isn't it? Though if he makes it out of this I wonder if Sam is going to start thinking twice about inviting controversial figures on his podcast.
In the 80s (when I was in graduate school) I had a seminar in which we debunked Murray's book Losing Ground. Losing Ground was an attempt to show that social/political policies (form the 60s) intended to help people struggling economically actually hurt them. Each chapter focused around a single topic (i.e., crime, unemployment, etc.) Each student took a chapter and tried to do a better analysis of the available data. I looked at the chapter on crime for example. It became obvious to all of us that Murray had not done any serious analysis of available data. Rather, Murray had some previous beliefs and his analyses were used to support his position. He wasn't looking for the 'truth.' He knew the 'truth' and used data to support it. It was a classic on how to 'lie' with statistics. For crime I looked at a larger historical context and found that over the 20th century as the group of males (aged 15-25) became a larger part of the population crime went up. As this group became a smaller part of the population crime went down. The rise in crime rates from 1960 to 1980 (Murray's analysis) had nothing to do with policies in the 60s.
Man, could we please trade 50 mediocre commentators to get Michael back? What in intellect we're now missing out on. Life certainly isn't fair, which I suppose was one of his main points, huh?
Everything you said was correct until you started talking about epigenetics. Trauma and what not cannot be passed genetically. A lot of bad science journalism has been trying to pass very bad takes on epigenetics. Most epigeneticists hate how the media talks about it. I’m saying this as a fan of yours.
I'm curious as to whether you've read the Bell Curve or listened to the podcast that you're referring to between Sam and Murray. I'm not trying to rush in and be a fanboy - please don't dismiss my comment as such. I just don't think you're giving fair treatment to what they actually discussed, and are effectively arguing against a strawman. The things that you're saying all make sense. Totally. But they aren't directly addressing the topic matter.
I really think Sam Harris' whole brand revolves around the simple concept of public perception management. Harris is masterful at perception management , but the way to make him lose is to beat him at his own game, not argue with him intellectually or whatever, but just to manage the public perception better. There are still ppl to this day delusional enough to think that Noam Chomsky "lost" that email exchange with Harris because he got short with him.
1:47 mark: Yeah, this was the downfall of the entire New Atheist movement. It basically began as a rejection of religion and ended up devolving into loosely associated cults of personality. Harris and the New Atheists absolutely cultivated and strived to create a culture of devotion and ego-worship. It's one of the big things that put me off of the New Atheist movement ages ago. Whether or not it was intentional is irrelevant to me, it's extremely anti-intellectual (because why explore ideas when your patron saint of reason will just give you the answer? Then you can hurry up and get to defending your saint on Twitter, Tumblr, TH-cam, forums, etc, from the attacks of the intellectual dullards and apostates of reason.
Looking into this deeper, I had a hard time taking Professor Nisbett seriously after reading a transcript of an interview in which he rails against problems with multivariate regression analysis and then gives one-to-one correlation examples to back up his assertion, which are the exact types of covariation issues that regression analysis corrects for. If a regression model is flawed, it is certainly within the experiment design, possibly the choice of regression model, but certainly not the concept of regression itself. The exact same design error can occur with procedural experimentation - e.g. misapplying controls, not accounting for inter-causality. It’s possible he was dumbing down his argument for listeners, but if taken on its face, it shows that he - a social psychologist at a major institution - doesn’t even understand basic statistical analysis. From reading a handful of his articles and perusing the methods and findings of some of his publications, he seems to routinely commit the same error that he chastises Murray for - proselytizing via experiment design.
The issue with this research comes down to _"if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid"_
"you're taking me out of context" My problem with Harris is that it takes him hours to get into the context. I like some of his ideas, and I agree with a lot of his talks, but he seems to make it more difficult than it needs to be.
A year late but you’re exactly right. Like with people like Jordan Peterson, if every single critique of your unbelievable utterances is simply someone taking you “out of context”, then maybe you should spend less time whining about how unfair the world is, and more time honing your ability to communicate effectively, because it clearly isn’t working for you as is!
he clearly didnt watch the entire video. Michael did mention I think a couple times that he found Sam Harris boring... but the last 2 minutes was where the real points were made. if you didnt make it to the end of the video then you missed that.
RedroomStudios You mean the hot take of “Sam Harris is without question a part of the soft alt-right...period”? Is that the hard-hitting substantive criticism he missed out on?
What is your deal with Harris? You can listen to what he says, and then listen to what you say he says, and it's like you're hearing it from a different language. Your approach to Harris is very Fox News.
13:55 One must have some understanding of Statistics in order to understand how Statistics are used to manipulate. It is not the numbers themselves which should be questioned, but rather the conclusions that are drawn from the evaluation of said numbers.
"I don't want Harris on my podcast because I dont find his work engaging and dont find the areas he explores to be particulary compelling and I find the guy dreadfully boring, so now listen while I talk about Harris, again, at length, like I do whenever I get the chance."
1:05 in: "I do think he's (Sam Harris) a trust fund baby." 1:45 in: "They can't abide any criticism of him (Harris)." 2:05 in: "There is a sort of level of religiosity and fanaticism, which is quite bizarre." This is gonna be good. Real good.
IQ is not a complex issue. Intelligence is a complex issue. A subject that covers a myriad of human attributes. Creativity, analysis, problem solving, critical thinking, visual acuity, spatial awareness, etc.. The list is endless. IQ is a reductive attempt to take that vast array of human attributes (all of which are classed under the vague label intelligence, many of which are poorly understood and most of which may or may not be interdependent) and then represent that array with a single positive integer. The whole idea of IQ as representative of intelligence is bizarre, to say the least.
Marc Pelletier, of course sam harris is just an entertainer. He's a failed vlogger, pod-caster and mouth-piece. You cant say he's a scientist or an intellectual, because he doesnt actually do any science and his "philosophy" hasnt actually moved any discussions forward. He's a youtuber who occasionally gets speaking gigs. That's it.
Justin Mack what a caterpillar thinks is the end of the world, the world calls a butterfly. The Truth May be out there. Sam is but a beacon upon a lighthouse. Perhaps you’re not seeing, what’s right in front of you. Perhaps.
Anyone who needs to fervently espouse the "conclusions" of Murray's book should ask themselves why it's so important to think whites are intellectually superior.
Why don't we have the president of planned parenthood, give a speech at Bob Jones University?? Let's see how accepting the right is of differing viewpoints.
If right-wingers de-platform left-wingers you can't then logically say that proves de-platforming is right. That having been said, I would *definitely* like to see this experiment go forward. Some of the best debates I've seen on religion have been between scientists on one side and apologists on the other, taking place on "holy ground" as it were; friendly turf to the apologist with a legion of clapping fans giving him (I just realized that in every case I'm aware of the apologist has been a him) support. So the template of them having on people they disagree with is already there. I really want to see this happen.
When it comes to speaking events, I don't think anything but the actual killing of the speaker could dent the populist left's airtight legacy for "mic-checking", shouting, pulling fire alarms (good use of the fire department's time, that), rioting outside, making threats, and even assault of the speaking party. It's as close as one can get to the literal act of putting one's fingers in one's ears and shouting "LA LA LA LA LAAA!". I'm no right-winger, but the left has won this badge of shame.
This video was my introduction to Michael Brooks. When he said, "How would Sam Harris do in a society that mainly valued empathy and human bonding?" I knew I had stumbled onto someone special. Michael was one of those rare diamond-in-the-rough type people. We need to emulate his compassion going forward. It's the only way. (On a personal note, I had been attending Codependents Anonymous meetings after my father's second visit to rehab. There are aspects to CodA that I find amazing and some that are not so amazing. One of the less amazing things was that I was beginning to feel like empathy itself was being pathologised. I was a confused wreck over it until last week when I was watching tribute after tribute stream in. I realised who I have always been at my core and who I still wanted to be, and what I want to leave behind when I'm no longer around. How I want to have made people feel. Empathy isn't the enemy. We might struggle with lack of self-love and self-compassion, but lessening our empathy towards others isn't going to give us more for ourselves. That's not how it works. Thank you, Michael, for reminding me of what truly matters and helping me come back to myself.)
How about stop trying to read people's minds or create straw men and instead engage in the actual arguments? Sam Harris has never argued that we should just accept the differences without creating policies that combat them. True equality can only be built on the foundation of truth so stop being an obscurantist because you're not helping anyone. The facts are uncomfortable but that doesn't give you the right to deny them or to destroy other people's reputations for acknowledging them.
I would constantly be annoyed if people kept misrepresenting his ideas over and over. I read what he says, I understand it from an intellectual point of view, then I read what other people say about him and I constantly scratch my head and wonder how they came to those conclusions because a lot of the time it is the exact opposite of the position he is presenting.
Hum, it may be by design. Never thought of that. Like I hear this nuclear first strike talk misrepresented all the time. In the hypothetical ISIS acquires a nuclear bomb and points it at New Dehli and is about to kill millions of people do you hit them first and kill 100k in the process. The answer obviously is yes. It was just put in such a specific and odd way that he was just asking people to take him out of context. Doing thought experiments is something done constantly among theoretical physicist but using it for politics is odd.
Evirthewarrior apparently you think saying a lot without saying anything is considered intellectualism. Tell me one thing of relevance Sam Harris has said.
WikeddTung He says something, then people deliberately quote mine him, ignore qualifiers, or do any other number of things to misrepresent him, people ignore what he actually says and only read what OTHERS have said about him and that is his responsibility to some how communicate it better? How about some honest reporting?
All that I really heard Sam say in his podcast with Murray is that he should be treated like a serious scholar and not like a racist. Which shouldn't be very controversial, since his book in question incited real academic debate, with some scholars supporting his position, and some opposing it. I don't know who's right or wrong, but either way, you can't just immediately dismiss it the way that Micheal would like to. But that's the core of this 'controversy' imo, Sam wants to have this as an academic debate, which means unconstrained by US politics or history. Micheal wants to frame this as a political debate. Unless Micheal some day decides to leave his own professional reference frame of US politics behind for long enough to have this debate, Sam's complaints that he's being taken out of context, though repetitive, will always be justified, because he is.
Jan-Lucas Deinhard, "They rejected our genetic knowledge and ridiculed racial science" "Those in every camp and in every country around the world have realized that the scientific basis of our racial thinking is no longer in doubt" -----Nazi propaganda
What you've described is not Michael taking it out of context, but putting it in to context. Sam thinks you can remove context for this, and you simply cannot unless you don't care what the effects of it are upon people of colour, which... would make you a racist.
Look, I don't like Harris much and I'm here to specifically hear critique of his content. Yet all you're throwing here is ad hominems and ill supported attacks on him as a person and now you're making me sympathize with his position. Seems it's a pattern with your channel that you have built infamy on.Wish you a thriving business on click bait slander and dishonest journalism.
I'm a liberal an avid listener of Sam's podcast, but I was very disappointed with the Charles Murray dialog. When he decided to chastise Ezra Klein, for the article that presented Murray's claims as dubious at best, and racially motivated at worst, I was again disappointed by his judgement. I also like reading VOX and love their video's. But as it turned out, I wasn't the only one. Here's a quote from his website; "It seems that my declining to do podcast with Ezra Klein has been widely interpreted as my failing to answer serious criticism of my views. Needless to say, I don’t see it that way. But I’m very uncomfortable leaving any significant percentage of my audience with the impression that I’ve dodged a hard conversation, or otherwise shirked an important responsibility. I’ve put it to a vote on social media, and it seems that a majority of podcast listeners want to hear Klein and I discuss these issues (76 percent on both Twitter and Facebook, with 40,000 votes in). So I’ve changed my mind, and I’m now willing to record a conversation with Klein whenever convenient. If he agrees, I propose we release it unedited, on both our podcasts." Sure, there are some zealous fan boys that can't handle seeing Sam disparaged an any way, but Sam also pisses off the right wing listeners when he addresses his disgust with Donald Trump. Recently he did a event with Ben Shapiro and Eric Weinstein, that really pissed off those same listeners. Sam interrogated Ben's reasoning for being so religiously devoted, which obviously made Ben very uncomfortable. Sam has opinions on many controversial topics, if you are a regular listener to his podcast, regardless of political affiliation, he will piss you off at some point. A little more than half of his podcast are with scientists from different fields, especially those dealing with consciousness and physics, but still a very wide range. These podcasts dig into the most interesting scientific discoveries and concepts, and I'm very grateful to be able to listen. Excluding the Murray podcast, I typically find his perspective is backed by a lot of good evidence and reasoning, even when I disagree with those conclusions.
I just listened to Sam destroy Ezra on his podcast. Obviously no one on this show understands following the imperical data and can't swallow the truth...
My main problem with Harris' interview with Charles Murray is he just pretended the last half of Bell Curve didn't exist. If anyone unfamiliar with Murray listened to the podcast they would think there was nothing shocking or controversial within the pages of the book.
he's very well spoken and makes his points without shouting at anyone or using direct insults(there might be a few thinly veiled ones in his debates, but mostly he restricts himself to attacking the ideas and not the person). and he seems quite reasonable on most issues...... he's a jew so of course he's unreasonable when it comes to israel.....but on most other things he's pretty reasonable.
other than his position on israel, i havent really heard any of his political points. i mostly watch him demolish woo. i completely disagree on israel, but i understand that he's a jew....so he'll be pro-israel. there's nothing to do about that. bill maher does the same.
I listened to that podcast with Charles Murray and the follow up with Ezra Klein - Sam Harris was beyond criticism in both conversations - I am lefty but this piece is jumping through hoops to criticise Sam Harris. In the podcast with Sam and Murray it was stated clearly on multiple occasions that the outworkings of the Bell Curve is that the difference between groups is so minimal and the variance within group so much higher that any difference noted there in should be ignored in making policy. This has not been noted by Michael Brooks and that doesn't look good.
It STUNS me that blinded people like Ezra do not CLEARLY see that the reason that a business owner might NOT want to hire someone with a name like, Dante Akeem Washington, as compared to someone named Warren Rosenstein, just MIGHT be because the owner has to make the best choice for his business and employees and when the owner has literally NOTHING else to go on but a "black name," or "white name," he IS FORCED to consider the behavior of the groups of which those names represent. IF the business owner actually interviewed the black and the white perhaps he'd know that the black person is the best fit, but ALL he has to go on is a name so he doesn't have that luxury. Which of the two groups represented by those two names is more likely to steal, be tardy, fail to perform, be combative? The black person or the Jewish person? The health of your company depends on such decisions. Going on NOTHING else, do you choose the one more likely or less likely to do harm or fail in his position? WHEN there is nothing else but a name to go on we are nothing BUT a representative of our GROUP. So, then what is the state of the African American group today compared to the white or Jewish? We all know the horrendous statistics that come from the black community regarding crime and misbehavior. Flip the script. Imagine you're a WHITE man who is an NBA coach and your salary and career DEPEND on you making the right picks for your team. The coach doesn't see the players yet sees only their name. I'm betting that >90% of the time the WHITE coach will DISCRIMINATE AGAINST the WHITE player and will pick the player with the African American sounding name. And we all know why. There is nothing wrong with that. When we are faced with LITTLE information, we must make fast and efficient decisions for our success or failure. This is HEALTHY and an ADAPTIVE trait which ensured the survival of our species. Throw PC into this equation and you win the Darwin award (stupidity award). Let's end PC now... PLEASE!
Actually, many of Sam's supporters (myself being one of them) called him out for becoming needlessly confrontational in that email exchange. I think it's a bit misleading (and insulting) to characterize so many of them as "cult-like" in their devotion to him. Also, saying he is "boring" isn't a great argument on the validity of his work. Most of the time, he devotes his podcasts almost entirely to the guest and their body of work.
I find it ironic that Sam Harris states things such as bad ideas are inherently bad when it comes to Islam and the Quran but when it comes to white supremacy, he's all about not judging these ideas and giving them an open platform! Maybe it has something to do with his views on Israel? Hmmmm 🤔
Verbatim from the start of your talk: "Let me just...sigh...I already like...the thing about Harris...is that...you know, I genuinely don't like, uh...uh, I'll be completely, uhh...I will be being totally dishonest, I think anybody, in this space, uh, uh, I don't know what the right word is..." Clearly, you do not. Coherence notwithstanding, should you really be speaking in public? Perhaps you should switch back to your first language? Uh, um...sigh..I don't know...Excruciating. And that's just the first 15 seconds.
This evening, I just discovered two videos by Michael Brooks and am disheartened that whatever's out there is all there will be. Besides the loss to a clear-eyed view of public intellectual life, I also found myself following everything he aid, quite exactly, and not finding anywhere to disagree. I was also busy being amazed at how cogently he navigated through what he was saying, and I hope he was speaking extemporaneously and not from a script. There are times when people comment, "You said what I wanted to, but so much better." For me, the really cool part is that I could have expressed all the same stuff (he had a couple of spots with more details than I'd've brought in), but I would have taken 2 days to say it, and it would have been a lot more confusing. This was my experience in both videos. So, it's kind of like finding a mirror of oneself (my name also is Michael). This is my eulogy.
Michael was such a beautiful human being :(
Yep so prolific in his breadth and depth of analysis
When I miss him I watch his impression compilation videos here on TH-cam. I laugh every time.
listening to him talk on this video and many others, he sounds like a highly arrogant piece of shit....no surpise hes on with Sam Seder...
I’m 3 years late in finding this, but Michael so brilliantly articulated why Sam Harris is wrong about Murray. Previous to that interview I’d been a Harris fan, and after listening to it I just couldn’t respect him anymore.
So sad to hear Michael’s no longer with us. Thanks for preserving his thoughts here.
it was the masha gessen interview for me. sam harps on islam, masha is like 'i'm queer, and fear the american evangelicals far more than i fear islamists.' sam dismissed her experience, which was laughable to me. dude made assumptions about queer folk, was contradicted by a queer person, and then doubled down. ok, captain rational.
Poverty also reduces scores on standardized intelligence tests. Poverty causes an estimated 14 point drop on IQ tests and that's just 1 factor. It's not like black Americans have been systemically kept in poverty and economic destitution for 400 years though, right?
Iq tests just proves how well you took the tests . I doubt my great grandmother was allowed to read yet alone take a whole iq test
or poor people see no use for the questions and metrics used in an IQ test bc they dont actually relate to the ways a poor person has to use their intelligence
They can only pull themselves out. No one can do it for them. Sitting on your ass and blaming other people isn't going to help.
@@Knaeben whats this ignorance talking point have to do with the topic??
@@Gamenetreviews post the study. Bc LeBrons Akron school disproves any bs you are trying to claim
RIP Michael, I'm from the UK and had just found him. So sad.
I just can't believe these IQ arguements exist in the 21st century!
Here's an example of how stupidly inaccurate they are, and What Michael is saying is completely right. on entry to university at the age of 30 I was given a dyslexia test, it had been thought I was dyslexic from school. I was practically illiterate when I left at 15. I avoided reading and writing where ever possible for many years. I struggled to find and hold down jobs. So if I had of taken the test at that point i expect i would have been in the lowest percentiles. Anyway when I got to around 25 I started getting interested in philosophy, politics etc so I started to read a little. I got to a point where I thought I'd give university a go. I found a course that accepted people with little or no qualifications. I was so nervous about the IQ test , I decided to do a high quality test the night before online as I did not know what to expect , I got a average score, but the next day, because I understood what the test was about, the kind of things that would be on there I ended up with a score in the top 3%. It was a 25 point jump in 24 hours. From that point I knew it was b.s.
Dog Hussy same here I am from the uk in north London ,came across the Michael brooks two years ago ,always looked forward to his pod cast
Simply outstanding ,devastating sad to here of his passing ,just a great ,intelligent ,insightful soul ,
His voice ,knowledge and unique approach is so needed for these tumultuous times
With the videos and his exposing of the Ben shapiros ,Sam harris, tucker Carlson ,Dave Rubin etc was extremely important and still is
He left a brilliant legacy and will never be forgotten
Rip Michael
i'm not a psychologist, but i';m an engineer. i understand numbers deeply.
iq tests measure a specific set of skills.
someone who doesnt practice those skills wont get a good score.
someone who does, probably will.
i would expect people from countries that are ravaged by famine and poverty to score very low.....when all of your time is spent on just trying to survive, practicing the skills measured by iq tests is not practical at all.
@@sabin97 definitely. That what is so frustrating, it's outdated nonsense. But the fact that Peterson and others put value on the test , just shows what bad actors they are.
@@phush3495
it HAS value.
did you not read what i said?
it measures a specific set of skills.
@@sabin97 I understand what you have said. I know it can be used to measure a skill set but the fact is it is often used to indicate difference, winners and losers. Like you have pointed out, those who are brought up in difficult environments, those do not have cultural capital will not score well generally. People with bad intentions are willing to use this, in the UK it has started to rear it's head in political discourse. The conservative party are quite routed in this idea of intellectual difference, it runs through their education policy. This is why our education pedegogy remains routed in Victorian tradition. I also understand that Peterson uses disclaimer that if we understand IQ we can better understand the issues people face. But essentially his main ideology is essential intelligence is a thing. You can argue that it is, but the intent tells the story.
Rest in peace, brother. I'm grateful I have hundreds of hours of your content to watch. Michael Brooks, you are truly one of a kind.
What happened to him?
@@hannah3146 blood clot
"He, basically, doesn't challenge Murray on anything."
So, he Dave Rubin'd him?
Meanwhile, Sam Seder doesnt get to interview anyone at all... cos he's an irrelevant bottom feeder
@ You misspelled Harris.. it not spelled Seder.
@ Sam has interviewed plenty of people, many with thoughtful, well-researched, insightful commentary and discussions. Any Seder guest > Murray, intellectually or by any other metric.
I felt when he repeatedly asked Murray why even do this study in the first place was good enough to basically call.murray out. He made sure to repeat several times even when Murray avoided the question. Sure he could have done more but it wasn't a debate.
@@kevinscott9745
Not challenging Murray at any opportunity is abdication of responsibility. If it's not a debate, is it journalism? If yes, you need to challenge Murray. If you're not questioning and challenging Murray when you have him in public view, you're enabling him -- and basically just making propaganda.
You know what's ironic? Things like "you're misinterpreting me", "you're taking that out of context", etc are exactly what religious people keep saying to people like Sam Harris.
If the subject is New Atheists becoming their enemy, I think the "radical leftist academia/media brainwashing our youth with the SJW" takes the cake. Sub in evolution for SJW, classic creationist.
Yes, leftist are totally the problem, as literal nazis march in the streets. GTFO.
Loool
RIP Michael your humanity and intellect are sorely missed.
Oh gosh. I miss Michael so much!
Harris's work helped me leave fundamentalist Christianity, but this whole thing with Murray and then with Klein really disabused me of the notion that he was a level-headed, calm, serious, data-focussed intellect.
Totally agree.
The Murray thing was my breaking point with him and new atheism
look at the response this video has gotten. also consider almost all voters are fans and similar opinions as the maker.
this video is garbage, embarrassing nonsense.
what about that whole thing makes you think hes none of those things? these people are brainlessly going on and on about how blacks are affected by this, spouting unfounded insults about racism hate and being illogical, instead of doing what science does and having a conversation about the data. theyre turning off their brain and screaming. how is sam the one with those faults and not these people?
@@wasdwasdedsf Wrong. You're not even a fan of the show so how could you possibly know anything about who's liking or disliking this video. Every video the MR puts out has almost 95% of likes except for oh coincidence the ones about Peterson or Harris or Rubin, why? Because their fans get so triggered by receiving criticism and they can't stand that someone would mock their little heroes so they start disliking without even watching it. You need to get out of your bubble and entertain the possibility that maybe Harris...you know, it's wrong. His atheism stuff was fine years ago and the only good thing he does now is the meditation thing, but that's about it. He's misinformed in virtually every other topic.
@@lemartin93 "Every video the MR puts out has almost 95% of likes except for oh coincidence the ones about Peterson or Harris or Rubin, why?"cause its insanely faulty.
how could you know whos liking and disliking the video? do fans get a special fanpage where they can see who liked which video?
"You need to get out of your bubble and entertain the possibility that maybe Harris...you know, it's wrong"
you do that by showing arguments.
funny this video has this insanity rating usually only reserved for embarrassing videos made by retards or insane patheitc conspiracy theory videos.
yet i should get out of my bubble. whos living in a bubble? maybe you should entertain the idea that you may, in fact, be living in a bubble.
"He's misinformed in virtually every other topic."
sounds like some solid evidence. people seems to post things like this but not say much else.
whats the problem with his and others AI hypothesis?
whats the problem with blacks being less smart? you do realise that by what that whole thing is about, whites should be fucking fuming and furious? we have 3 billion asians that are our master race. and what is it like 800 million blacks that are below us? thats not putting us in a very great light. but of course, its just for some magical reason none of you have any sources of that theyre just hating the color black. theyre perfectly fine with a yellow tint. of course this would need to be the case that they try to put them down for their iq, which would mean that they value iq, which should make them hide and not want to disclose evidence about asians... because if they dont value iq, the whole blacks having lower iq isnt much of an insult...
its almost as if theyre just discussing data... and you clowns freaking out about arbritrary things (identity politics or whatever it is, im new to this, i used to only be interested in actual science and not circuses).
its almost as if different genes leads to different things... blacks can be insanely much better at us at being athletes... but looking at data of intelligence makes you the devil. so you want them to be superior to us as athletes yet a ssmart as us at the same time? feels familiar...? you sure were the racists and not you people against us whites?
that morality isnt a real thing, so far as it means anything is to how actions can affect the total amount of wellbeing in the universe?
see this is how you form arguments, i wonder if any of people like you have guts to respond
I saw this same lack of judgment with Harris on The Joe Rogan podcast that featured Hannibal Buress when they started talking about police brutality . That shit was frustrating to listen to.
Hannibals ideas wouldnt work. You cant get rid of all cops cuz 50% are racist.
J spoolz. I really can’t imagine a person that listens to that podcast with Harris and buress with an open mind and doesn’t come out of it thinking “Wow Sam really made buress look like an idiot.” Not even because Sam was trying to undercut buress in any way. In fact Sam was being quite polite. But it seemed to take all but half of sams iq to show how underdeveloped buress’ ideas were. Not trying to be mean but please think through other people’s ideas honestly and thoroughly before making random claims like this one.
@@BingoBangoB0NGO8 I get what you're trying to say, but I have to disagree and I consider myself a level-headed person (I know, I'm biased, LOL). Hannibal was trying to make a point, but in addition to not being a skilled nor professional debater (like Sam), he was also inebriated. The point Hannibal was trying to make was that not all *lived experiences* can be quantified with data and, therefore, data can be skewed. Black people have been giving accounts of police brutality, entrapment, mysterious deaths of black people who had cantankerous run-ins with police, etc for literally centuries. Yet, many of these cases are just now gaining credibility due to the advent of the camera phone. Cases such as Emmit Till highlight how the black community knew that the supposed victim was lying, yet she only confessed on her death bed.
Sam is a very intelligent man. He often makes the case for skewed statistics when it serves his purposes, yet with Hannibal he acted like he doesn't understand that racial statistics, in particular, have been shown to contain bias. Sam *appeared* to take it easy on Hannibal because he knew it wasn't a fair fight, but because he also knew that he could basically say anything and Hannibal would have neither the knowledge nor language to refute anything he stated.
It was not Joe Rogan is was Josh Zepps
I get the distinct feeling, having listened to Harris quite a bit during this time, he was looking for a black person just to say ‘there is no racism by white cops in policing’.
I think that was typified when Sam eagerly made his oft repeated point ‘some black people are shot by black cops!’, to which Burgess replied ‘I never said anything about white cops!’ (which he didn’t, he was discussing policing in general), “I’m talking about harassment from cops in general’. Even Rogan laughingly admitted Hannibal had a point.
Either way these guys who are so desperate to prove racism doesn’t exist just come off as suspect.
Sam doesn't fetishize race and IQ. He has no interest in the subject. He had Murray on because of Middlebury. He's said repeatedly on the podcast and in his exchange with Ezra that he doesn't care for the topic. He even asked Charles "why study this at all?" and has said there may be things not worth looking into.
Look at the other comments. No one gives a damn about that, or anything they don't like for the matter.
You haven't figured out yet that Harris likes to be disingenuous?
philpott kentucky Or he engages in these sorts of discussions because of his broader interest in people’s inability to do so without automatically believing in the worst of their findings. Just because he’s not foaming at the mouth with outrage and shouting down anyone who holds an unpopular/unshared viewpoint doesn’t automatically indicate tacit agreement. Maybe, just maybe, he actually means what he says.
Cezariusz 88 What does Sam’s interest or lack thereof in studying this have to do with “his fans” talking about it? Outside of his podcast with Charles Murray, when has he spent any significant time discussing it?
Cezariusz 88 The fact is it isn’t Sam who’s so obsessed with this topic, it’s guys like these clowns who use Sam, JP and others to get clicks. They talk about Sam talking about it way more than Sam’s actually talked about it.
"pathological inability to absorb criticism" summed it up, BRAVO!!.
Ezra Klein: *gives rope*
Sam Harris: *hangs himself*
Also Sam Harris: "Waah! Everyone's being mean to me!"
"you're taking me out of context" - Sam Harris
I was trying to remember what he says every 30 seconds...that would be it!
Exactly. Sam Harris says, "It's not to say we're absolutely at war with Muslims." And Omar Duwaji quotes him as saying, "We're absolutely at war with all Muslims." Leaving out the "It's not to say" part.
And these Sam Harris Fanboys accuse people like Omar Duwaji of quote mining and taking Harris's statements out of context. Simply ridiculous. Where do they get these quote mining accusations from? It's unbelievable. The very thought. Incredible.
Well when he clearly explains his positions and people continue to take him out of context, what recourse does he have, accept the out of context characterizations he has thrown at him?
The hell they don't. I've seen it myself. There's that time when Harris says "With all the Islamic terrorism in Europe, the average guy is gonna ask, 'Why the fuck do I want these people immigrating to my country.'"
And they quote mined him to say, "Why the fuck do I want these people immigrating to my country."
That might not be a big difference to you but I think that's a gross violation of the viewer's trust. After a few events like that you begin to realize what kind of regressive leftists these nuts are.
There a bunch of authoritarians who won't report the facts and let you decide. They have this self appointed Orwellian role as the information filters.
They think you're an idiot who has to be lead by a ring through your nose. I wouldn't put them in the same category as the right wing nuts because their capacity to do harm is minimal. You're not going to have to drink arsenic laced water because of these left wing regressives.
AfroSlacker the never ending mantra: "you misrepresent sam harris"
This clip could discredit 2/3 of Bill Maher's hot takes & interviews with edgelords. RIP Michael. Still learning from you every day.♥️🌹
The point that Sam Harris should be uninterested in racial group differences because of his fetish for individualism is a good one.
hi! sorry to necro this thread. I don't speak for anyone, but the problem is that people (for example, some on the left) use racial group differences in outcomes as a basis for arguing that there is a significant amount of discrimination against folks. I don't think Sam agrees with me, but I think that many individualists seek to study differences in groups specifically to show that there are other reasons for differences than significant, ongoing discrimination. The goal of learning the differences in averages would be that we can then go back to treating people as individuals based on the content of their character.
I enjoy Harris's podcast, when i see a guest i'm interested in, he genuinely explores ideas and subject matters, but on policies like torture, racial profiling, or IQ, Harris's "intellectual ideas" are often amateurish. Many of his intellectual contributions, like AI or religion, are lifted from others, often books anyone can read, but most folks don't because it's easier to have them filtered, which is understandable given people lead busy lives, but before they know it they're a devotee in a personality cult. Folks need to filter Harris, just as he filters others, and diversify their sources, and occasionally pick up a book.
not very often one finds very well thought out and reasonable comments like yours on TH-cam. thank you
why would you bother with him at all? The only thing you get from listening to him is the chance that he'll trojan horse some absolute bullshit to you.
I agree. I like to listen to Sam Harris. If someone else doesn't like it, so what? I like that Harris for example is into psychedelics and that he cares about the environment at is one of the most critical to Donald Trump. At the same time he has other more conservative ideas. I haven't really thought about his shortcomings. Anyways, I listen to different kind of podcasts and ideas.
“Making a fetish of your ideology” has to be one of the best lines I’ve ever heard
What do we even do without Michael?
Bitchy Babysitter for real
It isn't the same
Irreplaceable
No one like him
We’ll be fine
I used to be a fan of Sam Harris, but he's gone right off the god damned deep end and I cannot abide his uncritical endorsement of "scientific" racism through that hack who wrote the bell curve. And don't even get me started on his fans, the one thing I will say in his defense is he's expressed a degree of horror when exposed to some of the shit his fans say, Dawkins as well, but I have to wonder just what they were expecting. When they decide to criticize Trump and their rabid alt-right fans get pissed, of course you have those people as fans, you spend half your time telling women to get back into the kitchen and criticizing the left for being insufficiently paranoid about Muslims as if they are a threat to domestic American politics.
As a left wing anti theist, I find the alt-light centerlord mentality in movement atheism utterly appalling. These people wouldn't know rational thought if they fell through a hole in the fabric of space time and landed on Socrate's head during a debate with Glaucon.
Giuliano Taverna only demeaning thing I’m aware being said which I would cast as misogyny was Dawkins dear. Muslimina letter. Any other examples
Of misogyny I missed from
Sam and Dawkins ? ( in reference to your comment about getting back in the kitchen )
the muslima letter was the opposite of misogyny. it was a very well deserved criticism of "elevatorgate" in which a guy asked a girl he liked if she wanted to have sex(yes, an invitation for "coffee in my room" is an invitation to have sex), she said no, and they went their separate ways. sadly after the fact the guy got labeled almost as a rapist. for the crime of inviting someone to have sex and not even insisting when they said no.
and i find it odd that people seem to try to associate harris with "iq realism" when he has explicitly said that trying to compare iq among "race" is scientifically invalid(i.e. he rejects the idea).....i'm not defending any of his views(specially when it comes to israel) but if find it odd that they try to associate him with something he has categorically, and unambiguously rejected.
I have it on authority that dawkins blacklists feminists from appearing at events he's at. That is to say if there are feminists he refuses to attend, so the venue bans the feminists.
Its a pattern of behavior, I mean just look at their reaction, (or lack thereof) to the Krauss sex scandal, never mind the Michael Shermer one from several years ago. And that kid who made the Toy Clock dawkins cringe-worthy rant on that just reeked of xenophobic bigotry.
And mind you I'm still a fan of Dawkins, on the whole he does a lot of good work, and I even met him in person recently at a book signing. That said he has very glaring flaws that I wish he would address. But I'm afraid he's too set in his ways to change on that. When it comes to Harris I'm way less forgiving, Dawkins would never interview a bigot without challenging them. And I certainly don't think he himself would ever assault anyone.
Really, its the new atheists fanboys and the youtube shitlords I have the biggest problem with, but when it comes to the big names, if they want to impress me, and leftist atheists in general, they would denounce these people as the vile enemies of reason they are.
That Clock boy kid was a total scam artist. Watch The Cult of Dusty's take on it for a full exegesis. The kid's father is tight with the genocidal dictator of Sudan.
th-cam.com/video/9UGLM31S6II/w-d-xo.html.
Yeah, me too man.
The funny thing with IQ tests is they cover a very narrow intellectual skill set you can practice and improve to some extent. I can get over 150 regularly having learnt pattern seeking skills etc.
However,. I'd suggest discipline, planning, commitment, focus, compassion, opportunity, experience, self awareness and people skills are perhaps more important than IQ test proficiency when it comes to achievement.
chillax1969 You can improve if you practice the same IQ test over and over but if they randomize the test structure it’s been shown that improvements don’t happen much. Some things improve it to small extents like being in good shape, not binging on drugs and doing certain exercises to keep your mind in “shape”
You are right though that if you have a lowish IQ it’s not the end of the world. There are other skills that you can have that will make you successful in life, I have first hand experience with this.
the general point though is that IQ has been shown to be a) a good indicator of other intelligences and b) a good indicator of success later in life
i'm not saying this because i back Murray's point. i say it because this is a weak point to argue against Murray with.
Any pure math under grad could easily get the highest score, it can be taught. One of my teachers explained how he practiced a shit load to get into mensa. Iq isn't fixed.
High IQ is generally a good predictor of success.
Dark Wolf443 define success
Wow Can't believe someone at last said it, that Sam Harris is soft alt-right, spot on man, you are my new hero
“Fan” is exactly the right word to use in today’s media environment.
"“Fan” is exactly the right word to use in today’s media environment." Look at nearly any Bolsonaro video on TH-cam and you'll find oceans of fans cheering for this Trump-like monster- we saw this in fans of Trump in the U.S. as well.
How many are simply fascists versus how many are paid shills, bots, or those who have been swept up in the huge amount of anti-Lula/pro-Bolsonaro propaganda that Google and Facebook enabled and that the Brazilian media has pushed ("mainstream media is concentrated in the hands of a few families, which all have goals and interests aligned with the opposition party") for years and especially during Bolsonaro's takeover, is hard to determine. But they definitely look like fans. It's hard for poor people in Brazil to access independent news or find non anti-govt/pro-Bolsonaro content.
Those comments about Glenn Greenwald aged like milk.
As a black man and an atheist....Sam Harris is incredibly frustrating to deal with. I can't appreciate his views on religion because he distracts me with his racially suspect narratives. I'm 32 years old and I'm already so tired of my perceived intellect being juxtaposed to my blackness.
I've got some years on you, and as a fellow poc, all I can say is it doesn't get any better. Looks up at shithead Simon Farre for prime illustrative example.
It's kind of relevant to this discussion. Are you a bit simple?
+Adam Smith - Sorry to stick my nose in on your conversation but, if you don't mind the suggestion, I would resist letting Simon hijack the conversation you started with the OP. If your conversation was about how people use race as a lazy shortcut to make guesses about another person's intelligence then continue that conversation. If Simon wants to have a different conversation about "everything being racist"--and then use that as a spring board to talk about "kemetic science racists"--I'd let him have that conversation with himself in the comments.
Just my opinion, obviously.
Simon Farre What the fuck are you talking about?
If you are 32 now, much like me, your brain was far too developed when sam harris came around to be a victim mark for his bullshit. Good on ya man.
Another thing I would mention Michael is that people believed the scientific community had more of a complete understanding of genetics. You mentioned epigenetics, which is good but scientists are discovering new epigenetic modifications to genes pretty often and are finding new effects they have as well. The whole picture of genetics right now is maybe a 30% completed puzzle.
The way I understand it is that things a person does in their lives do have an effect of which genes are expressed but not what their genes are. So the change is in the person and just needs a stimulus to activate it.
I have a very shallow understanding of epigenetics though.
Center Progressive your generally right but the characteristics we exhibit largely have to do with the extent of expression. For example male pattern baldness. It is genetic but some people have those genes more highly expressed than others and lose their hair at an earlier age or more quickly (this is obviously a bit of a generalisation). In terms of epigenetics yea things you do or experience can change the profile but you also are believed to inherit the epigenetic changes from your parents and each type of epigenetic change influences gene expression differently. For instance you can have methylation and acetylation. They add different chemical groups to your DNA or proteins that cause different activity such as stopping DNA replication past a certain point or preventing/increasing expression of genes or proteins. Point is there are many different methods of these modifications and more are being discovered plus the true effect of each still isn’t 100% understood
Matthew Keates Uh no.... I never said I agree that IQ is hereditary. It isn’t and has been proven not to be, I’m just saying that even scientists don’t have a full grasp of it so anyone trying to say something broad reaching and concrete about genetics being connected to A is likely full of it because it is becoming more and more complicated as discoveries are made.
+Eric Franklin - What's the source for the 30% figure? Thanks in advance.
Aj Meyers it’s not a statistic, just a statement to get across the point that if you hear someone suggest that we know exactly how gene inheritance, epigenetics, etc work, they are likely misinformed. I’m primarily speaking from my experience in research as an RA as well as my Masters research degree in cellular biology. Specifically because I learned about epigenetics in my bachelors degree and when I started my Masters all of a sudden there were 3 new types of epigenetic modification that had been discovered, knowledge on this stuff is evolving all the time, it’s not really possible to determine where our current knowledge base is, however given how quickly we figure out that what we perceived was wrong or not the whole picture it’s safe to say we are no where near knowing how it all works.
Actually you guys are trolling Sam by not engaging his arguments (you never once engage w/ Murray's statements on IQ/race) but only insinuating he's racist or questioning his character/methods of argument. Which is irrational. As progressives, we should be better than that.
Indeed Tripp ....
Murray is NOT A RACIST ...nor is Sam.
What were seeing here is this guy is being just as anti-science and anti-reason as any Global Warming Rightwing Denier.
This is simply a case of not being educated enough to understand what Sam talks about ..so these village idiot's get angry and strike out.
It's not Sam's or Murray's fault that right-wing types want to believe what they hear from these intellectuals support their racist beliefs .... any good Democrat (Progressive) should understand that right away ....but we don't get that these days ....
TheMobileHomestead sure yeah except for the fact that Sam applies pseudoscientific racial speculation all the time.
Aaronpolitical, I'm just wondering. It's generally accepted that the Border Collie is the most intelligent breed of dog. Unless you think that's due to "Border Collie Privilege" or that Border Collies simply have cultural advantages over other breeds, that's a pretty clear indication that intelligence is genetic/hereditary in dogs. Is that "junk science" as well, or does that only apply to humans?
+Titus Monk, was Galileo's work peer reviewed? Yeah, I obviously get that the concept of peer review didn't exist at that time. But if it HAD, do you think his work would have been peer reviewed, or peer reviewed positively? Do you not know what would have happened to anyone who DID peer-review his work positively? Well, pretty much the same thing here. It would basically be instant guilt by association for going against the zeitgeist of its time, and some people just don't want to deal with that. Due to the hysterical reaction among your crowd (much of which is evidenced right here), it's almost impossible to get honest debate on this subject.
Cezariusz 88, please see my response to Titus Monk above.
I listen to what Harris says, and then I listen to what you say he says, and I can't figure out who the f*** you are listening to, because it's clearly not him.
Sean L Exactly
This reminds me of the Affleck / Harris exchange on Overtime...so many over generalize what was said. Harris has pointed out racism is wrong in social interactions. His "racism" is scientific recognition of race disparities is a very different issue...there's a wonderful episode of House where a black doctor (Foreman) prescribes a heart med that is better indicated for blacks to a black patient and the patient flips out...despite there being scientifically substantiated evidence for its superior effects for black persons. This calling Harris racist for recognizing scientifically substantiated disparities in race is completely analogous to that exchange in that episode of House.
How about inviting Harris on?
I listened to this twice, and I'm still baffled by the contradictions. He starts by saying (paraphrased) "there's a whole host of cultural and historical reasons blacks score lower on IQ tests that Harris doesn't consider." Then, in the second half, he says, "It is a minority and fringe position to think blacks have lower IQ."
I mean, you can't have it both ways. In Harris's podcasts on these issues, he spends enormous amounts of time discussing these socio-historical-cultural issues. And I'm pretty sure he takes a firmly progressive stance on trying to change things to improve IQ for these groups.
But how can you propose change to help these groups if you don't first recognize the difference? The most progressive thing we can do is to recognize differences in IQ so that we can get on with it and propose policy changes to help.
Sean L you can't figure it out because you're part of his white race death cult.
Naked Bob you already were bigoted since you're part of the Harris cult.
I believe Sam brought up the same problematic findings. He said there was no societal benefit in creating a scientific analysis of IQ through the spectrum of race. Not because its not important but it will embolden bigots.
hi! bigots are already currently emboldened, though. People have no problem discriminating both for and against people based on their sex and race. This bigotry is studied, honed, and encouraged in numerous majors in colleges. It's also being embraced by more and more companies.
is there anything wrong with battling that? interested in your thoughts :) be well
I'm a lefty who finds Sam to be center left. Sure I disagree with his stance on Hillary over Bernie, but that doesn't make him right wing... He is against colonialism, The Iraq war, against ALL religion, for UBI, for welfare, unions, Medicare for all...please explain what thouroughly right-wing positions he has, please entertain us. Also in his interview with Murray he explicity says why he doesn't think racial IQ research should be done, because he thinks there are unfounded assumption being carried here. He is not for it.... He had Murray because he felt guilty for being a sheep who disavowed the guy cause he didn't like the data... You are such smear merchants.
Makeshift Altruist If you're against Islam or Muslims, then you're right winger. That's how it works nowadays.
"Lol whats wrong with hating 1/3rd of the world, stupid liberals" - Agnostic Not Atheist
Makeshift Altruist, Last time I checked the "alt-right" had the word "right" in it.
Sam Harris hates Muslims specifically with a passion, and he’s pro attacking Muslims nations, he dehumanizes Muslims and then says ppl “won’t let him criticize Islam” as if that’s what’s going on. He thinks all Muslims are innately and fundamentally evil no matter wat and yeah that’s fucking bigotry
@@moola9755 have u ever listened to Sam Harris? Your statement is completely false
Sam Harris wrote an article literally titled “IN DEFENSE OF TORTURE!!!” And then got mad when people accused him of defending torture LOL. He said torture should be illegal ... in an article called “in defense of torture” .. that’s who we’re dealing with here lol.
If I were a scholar i would recognize that thst is career suicide as well. But sam expects everyone to act in good faith and scrutinize the article...I'm assuming you didn't read the whole thing and realize it was a thought experiment? Wouldnt blame u if u didn't...
Read the article.
Let me guess. You didn't read the article.
@@parthn4135 thought experiments are for outlining elementary concepts, not for an intervention in the public arena on matters of policy. it's ironic that those complaining that people didn't "read the article" are guilty of the same offense - not reading the article.
in the end, Harris comes out "reluctantly" in favor of torture on the basis of a childish hypothetical from an episode of 24. triteness aside, there is nothing new here. for centuries, barbarism has been consistently defended by the well-off with "reluctance."
I would have LOVED to watch a Sam Harris vs Michael Brooks debate.
50% dislikes. Not doing too well. Claims Harris is boring, but 3 minutes into this mind-numbing monologue, the only thing he's said apart from saying "um", "uh" and "like" about a hundred times is that Harris's fans are religious, Harris is boring, and that Harris can't handle criticism. This is incorrect. Like any well-meaning intellectual, Harris welcomes criticism of his ideas. What he doesn't welcome is people calling him a racist or insinuating that he is racist again and again, when he clearly is not. Harris receives death threats and hate mail on a daily basis. Dishonest representations of his work and unintelligent conflation of his criticism of religious ideas with racism have given him a bad reputation all around the world. Absolutely no respect for Sam Seder after hearing this. Much prefer to hear intelligent people discuss important ideas eloquently.
Look up Edward Said's definition of Orientalism - fits Sam Harris to a tee.
I disagree.
The most effective orientalists were effective and dangerous exactly because they were so knowledgeable about the Eastern cultures they objectified. Sam Harris is ignorant as fuck about the Islam that he proposes to be an expert on.
"You don't understand the nuance of my position." - Sam Harris
The Humanist Perspective to be completely fair, that is often true though.
Joe Lancaster In his fans eyes, yes....
Whatever his positions are you're taking them out of context
Actually, I hate to say, many of you don't. I know it has become a meme to say Harris claims persecution upon criticism, but its not true. You guys are only capable of personal attacks, you never engage with the claims or merit of the actual argument. Incapable or unwilling, I'm not sure which is worse...
Well here is evidence at least his fans claim "persecution" on his behalf
Is two affluent white guys speculating on black people being dumb an accurate depiction of the conversation? I don't remember that being the case.
I discovered this channel recently and I am amazed by this guy’s intellect
Why are there so many dislikes on this video? He hits the nail on the head
At this time sam harris has a weird cult following online, so they would brigade any youtube vid criticizing him
I always find it amusing how the right decries eugenics while attempting to lay down the scientific groundwork for it.
This is so disingenuous. Neither Harris nor Murray made claims that strong or narrow about race or IQ on the podcast, and he did challenge Murray on several points. Total mischaracterization. Gross.
i think you took him out of context
Harris claims that the Vox article insinuates that Sam is a racist. Ezra says it doesn't. And then I come here and see that this dude read the Vox article the same way Sam did and walked away from it thinking that it exposes Sam's soft bigotry. It seems that Sam is right. The Vox article is providing ammunition to this show to paint Sam as a racist. They inadvertently proved Sam's case.
That's the whole point of all this isn't it? Though if he makes it out of this I wonder if Sam is going to start thinking twice about inviting controversial figures on his podcast.
I don't suppose that asking for citations for the claims presented here won't get my virtual head bitten off.
Which claims?
What claims?
Also, as his recently banned IDW buddy Stevy's pointed out, "their 'brains are smaller." Will be missing Michael's solid takes on these clowns.
Stevy?
@@SpicyDragoon Stefen Molyneux
In the 80s (when I was in graduate school) I had a seminar in which we debunked Murray's book Losing Ground. Losing Ground was an attempt to show that social/political policies (form the 60s) intended to help people struggling economically actually hurt them. Each chapter focused around a single topic (i.e., crime, unemployment, etc.) Each student took a chapter and tried to do a better analysis of the available data. I looked at the chapter on crime for example. It became obvious to all of us that Murray had not done any serious analysis of available data. Rather, Murray had some previous beliefs and his analyses were used to support his position. He wasn't looking for the 'truth.' He knew the 'truth' and used data to support it. It was a classic on how to 'lie' with statistics. For crime I looked at a larger historical context and found that over the 20th century as the group of males (aged 15-25) became a larger part of the population crime went up. As this group became a smaller part of the population crime went down. The rise in crime rates from 1960 to 1980 (Murray's analysis) had nothing to do with policies in the 60s.
Man, could we please trade 50 mediocre commentators to get Michael back? What in intellect we're now missing out on. Life certainly isn't fair, which I suppose was one of his main points, huh?
Everything you said was correct until you started talking about epigenetics. Trauma and what not cannot be passed genetically. A lot of bad science journalism has been trying to pass very bad takes on epigenetics. Most epigeneticists hate how the media talks about it. I’m saying this as a fan of yours.
Thank you Micheal Brooks, you had a good impact on the world, and you're missed by all of us.
I'm curious as to whether you've read the Bell Curve or listened to the podcast that you're referring to between Sam and Murray. I'm not trying to rush in and be a fanboy - please don't dismiss my comment as such. I just don't think you're giving fair treatment to what they actually discussed, and are effectively arguing against a strawman. The things that you're saying all make sense. Totally. But they aren't directly addressing the topic matter.
Michael is much smarter than SS. I love listening to him. As for Sam Harris, my guess is he would love to 'happily slap' Ezra Klein.
I really think Sam Harris' whole brand revolves around the simple concept of public perception management. Harris is masterful at perception management , but the way to make him lose is to beat him at his own game, not argue with him intellectually or whatever, but just to manage the public perception better.
There are still ppl to this day delusional enough to think that Noam Chomsky "lost" that email exchange with Harris because he got short with him.
Michael at his best with slowly teased out nuanced thought! Love it!
This guy is the saltiest man around....
Literally upset one person on the internet he’s doesn’t like had a conservation with a another person he doesn’t like about research.
Best video Michael Brooks literally did in his whole life.
Not even close.
1:47 mark: Yeah, this was the downfall of the entire New Atheist movement. It basically began as a rejection of religion and ended up devolving into loosely associated cults of personality. Harris and the New Atheists absolutely cultivated and strived to create a culture of devotion and ego-worship. It's one of the big things that put me off of the New Atheist movement ages ago. Whether or not it was intentional is irrelevant to me, it's extremely anti-intellectual (because why explore ideas when your patron saint of reason will just give you the answer? Then you can hurry up and get to defending your saint on Twitter, Tumblr, TH-cam, forums, etc, from the attacks of the intellectual dullards and apostates of reason.
Looking into this deeper, I had a hard time taking Professor Nisbett seriously after reading a transcript of an interview in which he rails against problems with multivariate regression analysis and then gives one-to-one correlation examples to back up his assertion, which are the exact types of covariation issues that regression analysis corrects for. If a regression model is flawed, it is certainly within the experiment design, possibly the choice of regression model, but certainly not the concept of regression itself. The exact same design error can occur with procedural experimentation - e.g. misapplying controls, not accounting for inter-causality. It’s possible he was dumbing down his argument for listeners, but if taken on its face, it shows that he - a social psychologist at a major institution - doesn’t even understand basic statistical analysis.
From reading a handful of his articles and perusing the methods and findings of some of his publications, he seems to routinely commit the same error that he chastises Murray for - proselytizing via experiment design.
The issue with this research comes down to _"if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid"_
"you're taking me out of context" My problem with Harris is that it takes him hours to get into the context. I like some of his ideas, and I agree with a lot of his talks, but he seems to make it more difficult than it needs to be.
A year late but you’re exactly right. Like with people like Jordan Peterson, if every single critique of your unbelievable utterances is simply someone taking you “out of context”, then maybe you should spend less time whining about how unfair the world is, and more time honing your ability to communicate effectively, because it clearly isn’t working for you as is!
IQ is also a major BS stat especially once you get past a certain threshold
Delusional evangelical Trump cultists and Q-Anus dip shits are totally dependent on that observation.
"He's so boring" ad hominem attacks. That's all this video is about.
You could at least skim through the video and pick out something that was actually said about Harris if you want to criticize it.
he clearly didnt watch the entire video. Michael did mention I think a couple times that he found Sam Harris boring... but the last 2 minutes was where the real points were made. if you didnt make it to the end of the video then you missed that.
RedroomStudios You mean the hot take of “Sam Harris is without question a part of the soft alt-right...period”? Is that the hard-hitting substantive criticism he missed out on?
"no one even listens to his show because he fucks small wooly sheep" = ad hominem. "he's boring" =opinion
An ad hominem is using a personal attack to undermine the argument. They didn’t say that “Sam Harris is boring so you should disregard his position”
For the love of god, I miss the hell outta Michael Brooks.
If you read his previous email exchange with Chomsky, this whole debacle is particularly funny.
Once gnomeChomsky dismissed spamHarris as a public intellectual of any seriousness, Harris career was cooked.
SAM HARRIS TROLLS INCOMING
based statement i'm confused... for or against? i felt you were trying to make a stance here, but it's unclear...
based statement they are not trolls they are genuine dickriders with chapped lower lips.
A Paris well I don't rock a edgy Avatar I am definitely the latter
+A Paris - He means that Sam Harris fans will be posting in the comments to defend the guru
Says the guy with the STUCK caps key.
What is your deal with Harris? You can listen to what he says, and then listen to what you say he says, and it's like you're hearing it from a different language. Your approach to Harris is very Fox News.
13:55 One must have some understanding of Statistics in order to understand how Statistics are used to manipulate. It is not the numbers themselves which should be questioned, but rather the conclusions that are drawn from the evaluation of said numbers.
"I don't want Harris on my podcast because I dont find his work engaging and dont find the areas he explores to be particulary compelling and I find the guy dreadfully boring, so now listen while I talk about Harris, again, at length, like I do whenever I get the chance."
I miss him so much. 😔
1:05 in: "I do think he's (Sam Harris) a trust fund baby." 1:45 in: "They can't abide any criticism of him (Harris)." 2:05 in: "There is a sort of level of religiosity and fanaticism, which is quite bizarre."
This is gonna be good. Real good.
Majority Report, please stop being so goddamn sensitive over practically nothing. Please produce something valuable
IQ is not a complex issue. Intelligence is a complex issue. A subject that covers a myriad of human attributes. Creativity, analysis, problem solving, critical thinking, visual acuity, spatial awareness, etc.. The list is endless. IQ is a reductive attempt to take that vast array of human attributes (all of which are classed under the vague label intelligence, many of which are poorly understood and most of which may or may not be interdependent) and then represent that array with a single positive integer. The whole idea of IQ as representative of intelligence is bizarre, to say the least.
Sam Harris is boring, I prefer Jordan Peterson crying, he and his fans are much funnier.
Perhaps look at stand up comedians; Sam is not an entertainer.
Marc Pelletier, of course sam harris is just an entertainer. He's a failed vlogger, pod-caster and mouth-piece. You cant say he's a scientist or an intellectual, because he doesnt actually do any science and his "philosophy" hasnt actually moved any discussions forward. He's a youtuber who occasionally gets speaking gigs. That's it.
Justin Mack what a caterpillar thinks is the end of the world, the world calls a butterfly. The Truth May be out there. Sam is but a beacon upon a lighthouse. Perhaps you’re not seeing, what’s right in front of you. Perhaps.
Marc Pelletier you’re funny
Christian Miller dance, while the music is on my friend.(:
Anyone who needs to fervently espouse the "conclusions" of Murray's book should ask themselves why it's so important to think whites are intellectually superior.
Why don't we have the president of planned parenthood, give a speech at Bob Jones University?? Let's see how accepting the right is of differing viewpoints.
If right-wingers de-platform left-wingers you can't then logically say that proves de-platforming is right. That having been said, I would *definitely* like to see this experiment go forward. Some of the best debates I've seen on religion have been between scientists on one side and apologists on the other, taking place on "holy ground" as it were; friendly turf to the apologist with a legion of clapping fans giving him (I just realized that in every case I'm aware of the apologist has been a him) support. So the template of them having on people they disagree with is already there.
I really want to see this happen.
Bernie Sanders spoke at Liberty U and apparently the reception, though very large, was nothing but cordial.
Learn, how, to, use, a, comma, you, idiot
When it comes to speaking events, I don't think anything but the actual killing of the speaker could dent the populist left's airtight legacy for "mic-checking", shouting, pulling fire alarms (good use of the fire department's time, that), rioting outside, making threats, and even assault of the speaking party. It's as close as one can get to the literal act of putting one's fingers in one's ears and shouting "LA LA LA LA LAAA!". I'm no right-winger, but the left has won this badge of shame.
yeah. i am no left winger, but the right are pretty darn close to fascist nazis nowadays.
This video was my introduction to Michael Brooks. When he said, "How would Sam Harris do in a society that mainly valued empathy and human bonding?" I knew I had stumbled onto someone special. Michael was one of those rare diamond-in-the-rough type people. We need to emulate his compassion going forward. It's the only way.
(On a personal note, I had been attending Codependents Anonymous meetings after my father's second visit to rehab. There are aspects to CodA that I find amazing and some that are not so amazing. One of the less amazing things was that I was beginning to feel like empathy itself was being pathologised. I was a confused wreck over it until last week when I was watching tribute after tribute stream in. I realised who I have always been at my core and who I still wanted to be, and what I want to leave behind when I'm no longer around. How I want to have made people feel. Empathy isn't the enemy. We might struggle with lack of self-love and self-compassion, but lessening our empathy towards others isn't going to give us more for ourselves. That's not how it works. Thank you, Michael, for reminding me of what truly matters and helping me come back to myself.)
Cygnelle great points💕
I don't see the rough part.
@michael brooks - That "no discipline or interest" section killed me. That was such a subtle, yet profound, burn. :-)
How about stop trying to read people's minds or create straw men and instead engage in the actual arguments? Sam Harris has never argued that we should just accept the differences without creating policies that combat them. True equality can only be built on the foundation of truth so stop being an obscurantist because you're not helping anyone. The facts are uncomfortable but that doesn't give you the right to deny them or to destroy other people's reputations for acknowledging them.
I would constantly be annoyed if people kept misrepresenting his ideas over and over. I read what he says, I understand it from an intellectual point of view, then I read what other people say about him and I constantly scratch my head and wonder how they came to those conclusions because a lot of the time it is the exact opposite of the position he is presenting.
Evirthewarrior you have to agree, on some level, that he has reached the level of fundalism that is equal to the devout christian...
Do you have an example of this happening?
Hum, it may be by design. Never thought of that.
Like I hear this nuclear first strike talk misrepresented all the time. In the hypothetical ISIS acquires a nuclear bomb and points it at New Dehli and is about to kill millions of people do you hit them first and kill 100k in the process. The answer obviously is yes. It was just put in such a specific and odd way that he was just asking people to take him out of context.
Doing thought experiments is something done constantly among theoretical physicist but using it for politics is odd.
Evirthewarrior apparently you think saying a lot without saying anything is considered intellectualism. Tell me one thing of relevance Sam Harris has said.
WikeddTung He says something, then people deliberately quote mine him, ignore qualifiers, or do any other number of things to misrepresent him, people ignore what he actually says and only read what OTHERS have said about him and that is his responsibility to some how communicate it better? How about some honest reporting?
Sam “we can’t talk about Neanderthals anymore” Harris
All that I really heard Sam say in his podcast with Murray is that he should be treated like a serious scholar and not like a racist. Which shouldn't be very controversial, since his book in question incited real academic debate, with some scholars supporting his position, and some opposing it. I don't know who's right or wrong, but either way, you can't just immediately dismiss it the way that Micheal would like to.
But that's the core of this 'controversy' imo, Sam wants to have this as an academic debate, which means unconstrained by US politics or history. Micheal wants to frame this as a political debate. Unless Micheal some day decides to leave his own professional reference frame of US politics behind for long enough to have this debate, Sam's complaints that he's being taken out of context, though repetitive, will always be justified, because he is.
Jan-Lucas Deinhard, "They rejected our genetic knowledge and ridiculed racial science" "Those in every camp and in every country around the world have realized that the scientific basis of our racial thinking is no longer in doubt"
-----Nazi propaganda
What you've described is not Michael taking it out of context, but putting it in to context. Sam thinks you can remove context for this, and you simply cannot unless you don't care what the effects of it are upon people of colour, which... would make you a racist.
With Harris and Trump, you notice that fascism does not need state intervention as liberals say.
Look, I don't like Harris much and I'm here to specifically hear critique of his content. Yet all you're throwing here is ad hominems and ill supported attacks on him as a person and now you're making me sympathize with his position. Seems it's a pattern with your channel that you have built infamy on.Wish you a thriving business on click bait slander and dishonest journalism.
I'm a liberal an avid listener of Sam's podcast, but I was very disappointed with the Charles Murray dialog. When he decided to chastise Ezra Klein, for the article that presented Murray's claims as dubious at best, and racially motivated at worst, I was again disappointed by his judgement. I also like reading VOX and love their video's. But as it turned out, I wasn't the only one. Here's a quote from his website;
"It seems that my declining to do podcast with Ezra Klein has been widely interpreted as my failing to answer serious criticism of my views. Needless to say, I don’t see it that way. But I’m very uncomfortable leaving any significant percentage of my audience with the impression that I’ve dodged a hard conversation, or otherwise shirked an important responsibility.
I’ve put it to a vote on social media, and it seems that a majority of podcast listeners want to hear Klein and I discuss these issues (76 percent on both Twitter and Facebook, with 40,000 votes in). So I’ve changed my mind, and I’m now willing to record a conversation with Klein whenever convenient. If he agrees, I propose we release it unedited, on both our podcasts."
Sure, there are some zealous fan boys that can't handle seeing Sam disparaged an any way, but Sam also pisses off the right wing listeners when he addresses his disgust with Donald Trump. Recently he did a event with Ben Shapiro and Eric Weinstein, that really pissed off those same listeners. Sam interrogated Ben's reasoning for being so religiously devoted, which obviously made Ben very uncomfortable.
Sam has opinions on many controversial topics, if you are a regular listener to his podcast, regardless of political affiliation, he will piss you off at some point. A little more than half of his podcast are with scientists from different fields, especially those dealing with consciousness and physics, but still a very wide range. These podcasts dig into the most interesting scientific discoveries and concepts, and I'm very grateful to be able to listen. Excluding the Murray podcast, I typically find his perspective is backed by a lot of good evidence and reasoning, even when I disagree with those conclusions.
I just listened to Sam destroy Ezra on his podcast. Obviously no one on this show understands following the imperical data and can't swallow the truth...
My main problem with Harris' interview with Charles Murray is he just pretended the last half of Bell Curve didn't exist.
If anyone unfamiliar with Murray listened to the podcast they would think there was nothing shocking or controversial within the pages of the book.
I don't dislike Sam Harris, but I never got his appeal.
Greg V. He is a measured liberal centrist.
he's very well spoken and makes his points without shouting at anyone or using direct insults(there might be a few thinly veiled ones in his debates, but mostly he restricts himself to attacking the ideas and not the person).
and he seems quite reasonable on most issues...... he's a jew so of course he's unreasonable when it comes to israel.....but on most other things he's pretty reasonable.
sabin97 his political point s are hypocritical
other than his position on israel, i havent really heard any of his political points. i mostly watch him demolish woo.
i completely disagree on israel, but i understand that he's a jew....so he'll be pro-israel. there's nothing to do about that. bill maher does the same.
Sam harris fans & Trump Supporters have one thing in common ,both act like sheep about their Messiah
In a world of over saturated poscasts and youtubers, this guy is not required.
....Subscribed...
I listened to that podcast with Charles Murray and the follow up with Ezra Klein - Sam Harris was beyond criticism in both conversations - I am lefty but this piece is jumping through hoops to criticise Sam Harris.
In the podcast with Sam and Murray it was stated clearly on multiple occasions that the outworkings of the Bell Curve is that the difference between groups is so minimal and the variance within group so much higher that any difference noted there in should be ignored in making policy.
This has not been noted by Michael Brooks and that doesn't look good.
You can tell this guy is objective. checkout his Sam Harris impersonation @ 17:09
It STUNS me that blinded people like Ezra do not CLEARLY see that the reason that a business owner might NOT want to hire someone with a name like, Dante Akeem Washington, as compared to someone named Warren Rosenstein, just MIGHT be because the owner has to make the best choice for his business and employees and when the owner has literally NOTHING else to go on but a "black name," or "white name," he IS FORCED to consider the behavior of the groups of which those names represent. IF the business owner actually interviewed the black and the white perhaps he'd know that the black person is the best fit, but ALL he has to go on is a name so he doesn't have that luxury. Which of the two groups represented by those two names is more likely to steal, be tardy, fail to perform, be combative? The black person or the Jewish person? The health of your company depends on such decisions. Going on NOTHING else, do you choose the one more likely or less likely to do harm or fail in his position? WHEN there is nothing else but a name to go on we are nothing BUT a representative of our GROUP. So, then what is the state of the African American group today compared to the white or Jewish? We all know the horrendous statistics that come from the black community regarding crime and misbehavior. Flip the script. Imagine you're a WHITE man who is an NBA coach and your salary and career DEPEND on you making the right picks for your team. The coach doesn't see the players yet sees only their name. I'm betting that >90% of the time the WHITE coach will DISCRIMINATE AGAINST the WHITE player and will pick the player with the African American sounding name. And we all know why. There is nothing wrong with that. When we are faced with LITTLE information, we must make fast and efficient decisions for our success or failure. This is HEALTHY and an ADAPTIVE trait which ensured the survival of our species. Throw PC into this equation and you win the Darwin award (stupidity award). Let's end PC now... PLEASE!
Sam Harris should actually try meditation.
Actually, many of Sam's supporters (myself being one of them) called him out for becoming needlessly confrontational in that email exchange. I think it's a bit misleading (and insulting) to characterize so many of them as "cult-like" in their devotion to him.
Also, saying he is "boring" isn't a great argument on the validity of his work. Most of the time, he devotes his podcasts almost entirely to the guest and their body of work.
Rest in power my friend
Sam is damn near a charlatan
Michael Brooks sorta was, always these long winded pseudo relevant diatribes before he gets to his actual point.
Sam Harris < the fMRI his mommy donated
Michael Brooks sadly missed.
I find it ironic that Sam Harris states things such as bad ideas are inherently bad when it comes to Islam and the Quran but when it comes to white supremacy, he's all about not judging these ideas and giving them an open platform! Maybe it has something to do with his views on Israel? Hmmmm 🤔
Verbatim from the start of your talk: "Let me just...sigh...I already like...the thing about Harris...is that...you know, I genuinely don't like, uh...uh, I'll be completely, uhh...I will be being totally dishonest, I think anybody, in this space, uh, uh, I don't know what the right word is..." Clearly, you do not. Coherence notwithstanding, should you really be speaking in public? Perhaps you should switch back to your first language? Uh, um...sigh..I don't know...Excruciating. And that's just the first 15 seconds.
as a sam harris fanboi you probably arent used to someone gathering their thoughts
This evening, I just discovered two videos by Michael Brooks and am disheartened that whatever's out there is all there will be. Besides the loss to a clear-eyed view of public intellectual life, I also found myself following everything he aid, quite exactly, and not finding anywhere to disagree. I was also busy being amazed at how cogently he navigated through what he was saying, and I hope he was speaking extemporaneously and not from a script. There are times when people comment, "You said what I wanted to, but so much better." For me, the really cool part is that I could have expressed all the same stuff (he had a couple of spots with more details than I'd've brought in), but I would have taken 2 days to say it, and it would have been a lot more confusing. This was my experience in both videos. So, it's kind of like finding a mirror of oneself (my name also is Michael). This is my eulogy.
Charles Murray has argued for BUI, (Basic Universal Income), so I'm not sure it's true that he wants to "strip all safety nets"