I begin to sense a pattern
Ophelia Benson on Omer Aziz and Sam Harris. She is the queen of the quote and response and lays this out nicely. Socrates is mentioned, fair warning.

Just staggering from Harris. 4 hour Pod, where he goes through a 2800 piece from Aziz and dissects line by line. And Harris decides not to release it.

JRPC wrote:

You'd have to be a masochist to try and engage with dj or legaldinho, but I got the sense with you there was at least an actual desire to discuss something. 

I'm now thinking that maybe I've misjudged that.

Disgraceful. He answered your question concisely without any links. Maybe you had some clever follow up that Face has ruined by answering it perfectly. Tough shit. Face is the one who’s given you a chance to explain and debate properly. You might not like the way he does it but don’t blame your own failings on him.

You’ve got nothing. It’s all baseless assertion and then “Oh the PC brigade what’s to be done?” hand waving and pearl clutching. Then occasionally shit like this slips out (from Act 1 of this discussion in the CA thread).

JRPC wrote:

SpaceGazelle wrote:

Stuff Harris is right about imo:

Religion being rubbish and A.I being scary. 

He seems perversely upset with Islam to the point of sounding like a cunt, which basically makes him a cunt. You can't pick on one more than the others for being worse. That's yer basic racism right there, with no regard for history, poverty, common sense and the awfulness of the Christian cunts that fucked everything up in the first place.

You absolutely can.

Religion is just a set of ideas and the harmfulness of each religion can be traced back to the specific doctrines of each.

Compare Jainism and Catholicism for example.

Fyi Harris has written an entire book criticising Christianity. He hasn't about Islam.

Really requires some profound naivety or simple-mindedness for this one. Freethinker got in this same mess, specifically about Islam. The more people disagree with your ridiculous and offensive assertions, the more you think you’re on to something. Nigel Farage-esque.

Anyway, I think we’re all done here. No hard feelings but this is some rank bad shit you’ve got yourself mixed up in here and you need to have a bit of a think about it. At the bottom of an internet dog pile is not the ideal location for that though.

JRPC wrote:

@jon You think the question "do you think that the ideal is to look at these things without bias" doesn't have a yes/no answer?

I mean, it's literally in the post I wrote.

JonB wrote:

The question was flawed - it didn't have a simple yes/no answer.

Others have gone to the trouble of explaining why. Engage with them.

At the moment this is you saying that the PC brigade are just attacking Harris etc and refusing to have good faith arguments. And then people are actually trying to engage with you and you're telling them they're just attacking you and refusing to have good faith arguments. You're actually doing the people you're trying to defend a disservice.

I thought there was no spoon?

JRPC wrote:

So this is fairly key and I think the main point of confusion here on B&B.  

Harris' claim is that the controversy around the Bell Curve was not at all a good-faith criticism or debate about complicated multifactorial science, but was actually witch hunt and absolutely a piece with that neanderthal hypothetical. 

Despite Murray's conclusion in the chapter that dealt with race and IQ being that he remained agnostic about the degree genes play a role, Harris' view (which I've been now persuaded of) is that Murray is the victim of a 20 year campaign of smearing and vilification that goes Infinity beyond honest good-faith scientific criticism.

Harris had Murray on his podcast to discuss the consequences of free and open speech around charged issues like this, and not actually to really discuss the science of race and IQ in of itself. Since then, for daring to have had this conversation, Harris has himslef become embroiled in the controversy and tarred with the same racist brush by the likes of Klein and Vox (and most people here). 

There is this contention that this isn’t about race and IQ, it’s about free speech and open interpretation of data in science. That in and of itself is fine and uncontroversial.

Where this falls apart is that the only other example of this happening that’s being offered is a hypothetical statement. I haven’t seen anything at all that suggests that this is a widespread issue. It seems to me that what we are looking at here is some controversial (to put it mildly) findings to a single question that have been dismissed by most of the scientific community, but one which racists (I’m not including you or Harris in this description) appreciate as they feel it provides justification for their racism.

All of this talk around scientific freedom and data interpretation strikes me as a smokescreen from those on the right to try and avoid a particular piece of dodgy science being dismissed by claiming a wider controversy, evidence for which is scant.

JRPC wrote:

Facewon wrote:

I begin to sense a pattern
Ophelia Benson on Omer Aziz and Sam Harris. She is the queen of the quote and response and lays this out nicely. Socrates is mentioned, fair warning.

Just staggering from Harris. 4 hour Pod, where he goes through a 2800 piece from Aziz and dissects line by line. And Harris decides not to release it.

I take it that you haven't listened then?

Please please do. It's a great one.

So he decided to release it? No, I haven't listened. I only came across the above just before posting it.

You can't see the issue with how he went about the exchange? You don't see a pattern?

JRPC wrote:

IQ tests are standardised.

Standardized how? In a way that leaves mismatches between groups. Yay. Must be the groups' relative intelligence rather than a flaw in the standardisation process, or futility of the whole thing.

I'm willing to say that an absence of bias sounds great as an ideal. It's just unattainable, so not hugely helpful. The end of disease sounds great too, and food for everyone please.

JRPC wrote:

@jon

You think the question "do you think that the ideal is to look at these things without bias" doesn't have a yes/no answer?

I'm genuinely curious here, do you think it does?

[insert joke about JR seeing everything as black and white here.]

AJ wrote:

JRPC wrote:

I think that it only has a yes or no answer.

Interesting. In that case, which would you pick?

Not going anywhere with this, just curious, as I said.

Yes.

JRPC wrote:

I think that it only has a yes or no answer.

Did Kuhn and Popper pass you by?

Facewon wrote:

I begin to sense a pattern Ophelia Benson on Omer Aziz and Sam Harris. She is the queen of the quote and response and lays this out nicely. Socrates is mentioned, fair warning. Just staggering from Harris. 4 hour Pod, where he goes through a 2800 piece from Aziz and dissects line by line. And Harris decides not to release it.

I take it that you haven't listened then? Please please do. It's a great one.

So he decided to release it? No, I haven't listened. I only came across the above just before posting it. You can't see the issue with how he went about the exchange? You don't see a pattern?

I really think you should listen to it.

If you do ever get around to it, read that article again and let me know your thoughts.

Lol. Not the most enticing offer is it?
‘Listen to 4 hours of Sam Harris spout shit then come back and have me impugn your motives and ignore your points.’

Ok, so here's a possible stance to think about.

I get that you are taking the position that Data is Data and facts shouldn't be distorted by political / social bias. And that's fine in itself.

But if we take the issue that goes with the Bell Curve and that I feel Harris is missing is that the Data either had an agenda or is poor data. Let me explain my thinking.

In very broad terms Murray compared the IQ metrics of different races which is fine in itself I suppose. The only problem is, if we were to take that result as anyway pure data we'd be mistaken for the following reasons.

1. The question has to be asked why divide the IQ result by race at all? At the time of the Bell Curve it's mid 70's. America is still coming to terms with the racial shake up of the late 60s so in most cases, whites would have access to far better education facilities and be exposed to the potential of education (I'm a firm believer that in general people who cant see how far they can go in life tend to limit themselves). So there's going to be an obvious slant to the results (if we take skin tone out it would be like comparing IQ test results in the poorest town in the US with the richest - we know the wealthy will by and large score higher there). the comparison is clearly not like with like

This being the case why pose the question at all? It was never going to be a fair comparison and hence, the data looked for could be considered to have had a deliberate agenda behind it. And this would be the key point those arguing against Harris are making -not allowing for the environmental issues around it such as education and individual wealth makes it look like the data is being aimed at highlighting a specified goal

2. I've not read the Bell Curve and have to admit I'm going on others writings about it but one clear thing that stuck out before it was published is that they never got it peer reviewed. Now, this may be an innocent oversight but it feels deliberately to get the results out before there was a chance to discredit the findings . 

So thats my uneducated take on things. Regarding Harris himself, I'm not sure if he is an alt-righter or not. I've listened to a good bit of him and while I initially liked the guy I felt he is only too quick to simplify things to suit his agenda and while he speaks well, sometimes I feel that beyond his basic outline there's a lot of empty noise. Maybe he is trying to subtly court the alt-right dollar and if so, calling him out on that even if its not his personal belief seems entirely fair game.

Shit, how did I misread that? Must be my superior white genetics

I still feel my point stands about the inequality of the data though.