SIO132: Ezra Klein Out-Sam-Harrises Sam Harris

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:29 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only, this is episode 132, I'm your host Thomas Smith, and I'm real excited, we are a couple days away from AACon in Oklahoma, I will be there, come say hi, it's gonna be a great time. And then the very next weekend is that Brew City Benefit in Milwaukee for Milwaukee Humanists, gonna be fun time, gonna nice, caring, non-shitlordy time there, so please come to that if you can, and support good things when they happen. I think it's very important. Brew City Benefit, the weekend after this coming one. So lots of chances to come hang out. I'm excited. Hopefully I'll see you. All right, got a lot to talk about today. Several sort of related issues.

0:01:13 Thomas: I've just got a little bit of time. I've got a whole lot to say. I don't know how to frame it. We'll just buckle up. I don't know. Hopefully it's some good thoughts that make sense together. But so much of it is just the sum of what I've been trying to do and what the atheism movement is, what it should be, and how I'm functioning in it, how other people are functioning in it. There's a lot, but let's get to it. The first thing I wanted to do is just point out how frustrating a position it can be to be someone like me in this instance. And, and I'll tell you what I mean. So I'm someone who, you know, has something of a following, but nowhere near Sam Harris, you know, but it's, I'm a tiny percentage of what he has.

0:01:59 Thomas: And certainly same goes for like Matt Dillahunty and Seth Andrews, though they aren't anywhere near Sam Harrison. I don't think they're definitely in an echelon of support higher than me. And the only reason I bring it up is I am someone who I firmly believe there are certain problems with certain views of leaders in the atheist movement. And you've heard me talk about it a lot. And I think Sam Harris is definitely one of the biggest offenders in my mind in terms of some of the crap that he has platformed and just totally unskeptically accepted. And no, I'm not even talking about Charles Murray, although I'm going to talk about that. I have, have a take on that briefly, but that was the whole thing. But anyway, lots of problematic views. And when the Lawrence Krauss thing happened, you heard me do a couple episodes on that.

0:02:48 Thomas: And I firmly believe that the response was inadequate and the reasoning behind some responses was problematic and was part of the overall culture that leads people to discount victims, discount women. And that's a view I very sincerely hold. And something that happens to me repeatedly and has been true of my entire career of any time I've dared to criticize one of the leaders of the movement, what happens is I'm inevitably in a terrible position because they've got a large fan base, a much larger fan base. And there's somebody with a bigger platform, form, that's hard to reach. So I get things like, "Oh, why are you just, you're just stirring up shit."

0:03:33 Thomas: You're just trying to bring other people down. You're just trying to get listeners. You're just whatever you're doing drama. Oh, the infighting. And it's somehow seems to always fight on and fall on me. You know, like whoever's the, whoever's, the person who's saying something that I think is problematic and something they shouldn't be saying. It's not the, the, the onus isn't on them to maybe revise their beliefs. It always seems to be on me to not, rock the boat too much because, hey, we're all atheists. We're all in this together, right? And it's one of those things that's easy to say and then hard to fight off. It's like the schoolyard, you know, well, if you love him so much, why don't you marry him kind of thing. There's no good response to it like, oh, yeah, true. I mean, anything I do kind of makes it seem like I'm making a bigger deal out of it.

0:04:18 Thomas: But at the same time, you're faced with a choice. If you're someone that believes people, leaders in a movement that at one time or another, and maybe still is important to me, if you're someone who believes that they are making slip ups and maybe not just slip ups, but are perhaps ideologically motivated in some cases or perhaps blinded by their biases in some places, and this is my sincere opinion, you've got two options. Option option one is to just not say anything. And this is what most people do. If indeed they do feel this way, they err on the side of not rocking the boat because it's a numbers game. I mean, contrary to what people seem to think, certain people seem To think all the money in the world is in going full free speech fundamentalist and going Jordan Peterson going Dave Rubin.

0:05:09 Thomas: And I mean, that's where the money is. That's where The numbers are, you know, especially when you look at someone like Carl or someone like Amazing Atheist or one of those basically white male free-speechy guys where they get to say, treat everyone the same. Whoa, isn't that reverse racism? All those things that appeal to broadly a white male audience. Guess what? Those are what make you the most money because white men have the most bunny in our society. They are already statistically going to make up the bulk of the atheist movement. They vastly outnumber everybody. And so naturally, yes, doing things that appeals to that group is by far the safer way to go. And playing it safe and not criticizing anyone with a following is actually the much smarter financial thing to do.

0:05:56 Thomas: So that's one option. The options are say nothing. And by the way, nothing changes. You don't fix the problem, you know, and people are still sexually harassed and victims are not believed. And there's all kinds of problems in how skeptics discount the evidence. So you make no change at all, or you say something and then you have to deal with this crap. You have to deal with their massive audiences coming and telling you that you're stirring up shit and you're just trying to take someone down and all those apologetics. It's frustrating. So I know that's a bit of a woe is me thing, and I apologize for that. But it really is the scenario I find myself in. And just as an example, by the way, three years ago or so, two years ago, whenever Dave Rubin started doing his Dave Rubin thing, he was the darling of the atheist community for a minute.

0:06:43 Thomas: And when I started trying to point out like, hey, this guy isn't a liberal. He's just pretending to be a liberal. And then mysteriously, he only ever takes a crap on liberals and everything they do. Like, isn't that a little mysterious? And I just get dork after dork on Twitter. He's a liberal, he's a literal, he says gay marriage, you know, pot. He's illiberal, he is illiberal. Well, someone just shared a video with me that is literally Dave Rubin just the other other day saying, if things stay the same in 2020, I'm voting for Trump. I'm voting for Donald Trump over Elizabeth Warren. I am voting for Trump over Sanders. He is a conservative. He's a Trump supporter. That's what he has been the entire time.

0:07:30 Thomas: I just want to point out how frustrating that is. Never do I get a, "Oh boy, Thomas was right in 2015 or whatever that was when he started saying," no, no one ever does that. I think there's like one person who has emailed me and been like, "Yeah, I bought into the Rubin thing." Sorry, I don't. So I actually haven't mentioned Rubin much to my memory the last few years. I mean, maybe occasionally, but I used to focus more on it when I thought people were actually buying into his BS about being a liberal. But now I think it's pretty much out in the open and everyone gets it, I hope. But do you know how many posts I had to deal with of, "Thomas, you're just jealous, you're just trying to take out, look, you're both atheists, you're trying to take him down because you look at his Patreon account and you see to," blah, blah, blah.

0:08:18 Thomas: And it's just so frustrating because the man has admitted he's going to vote for Trump. Now, it's not even like voting, voting for Trump in 2016 was awful. Voting for, for Trump in 2020, how dumb do you have to be? How conservative do you have to beat? You are a conservative if you want to vote for Trump. It's worse than conservative. It is ideological to the point of ignoring massive, massive things wrong with him. I mean, there are Republicans who go on Dave Rubin's show. This literally has happened with David Frum and and all that. They go on his show and they're, they're never Trumpers because while they're Republicans, they recognize that Trump is awful and just not a legitimate candidate for president by any stretch. And they get absolutely destroyed by Rubin's fan base, his fan base. It's not just conservatives.

It'S people who are Trump supporter conservatives, which is, I mean, that, that is a majority certainly of the Republican party, but it's not all of it. I mean Republicans are more lukewarm on Trump than, say, previous candidates because Trump is a nightmare. But given all that, you never get any of these quote-unquote skeptics going back, re-examining the evidence and saying, oh, okay, maybe this person wasn't just full of shit.

0:09:37 Thomas: Maybe this person was actually picking up on something. But the same stuff is kind of happening a little bit right now because I was critical of Matt Delahunty. I was a little bit critical of Seth. I'm super critical of Sam, Sam Harris, by the way, way, way more than them. But he, I'm not on Sam Harris's radar. He's, he's, he's big time. And, you know, I have to kind of go through the same crap. By the way, it doesn't mean I'm always right about everything. I just am trying to clear up the fact that constantly you have to deal with a ton of people telling you what your motives are. You know, you have deal with a bunch of people saying, "Oh, you just want, you don't really believe the things you say. You don't really care about the sort of the harm that has been done to the Me Too movement." When people have been saying, "Well, sure, you know, I support Me To, but," and then say a bunch of "but" things that undermine Me To.

0:10:26 Thomas: You don't really care about that. You just want to stir stuff up. And that's what I'm trying to push back against. It doesn't, it doesn't mean I'm infallible or something, or that I'm always going to be right. And I'm open to, uh, to discussing these things and arguing about these things. But I, it's, it gets really tiresome to have to deal with all that. And so honestly, I, I always think like it, man, my life would be easier if I just didn't, you know, because it's it's also there is something about it that seems less dignified. You know, if I do my show now, I've done a lot of episodes and I'm very proud of my episodes. I have a plenty of interviews about interesting things that have nothing to do with this. But when I look at this, the situation, I look At what's happening in in our little movement here. I just I can't help but feel a sense of responsibility to try to call out what I think is wrong.

0:11:16 Thomas: And it unfortunately, it makes it can feel like I'm just engaging in some sort of drama-stirring thing, and it sucks. I don't know what the solution is, but I do know that if I don't do it, then I'm not doing it. And like, so you know, and I, I do feel like it's, it's not quite the right thing to do to, to leave it to somebody else, just hope, okay, well somebody else will do this, somebody else will, will kind of put their reputation on the line, somebody, you know, that kind of thing, that doesn't seem like the right thing to do. But I was also thinking about this. It's weird. The things we decide are infighting and just trying to knock each other down and just drama and all that. And I think there's, there's certain things that go into it. So like, for example, remember, I don't know, four years ago, whatever the heck it was, when Sam Harris and Dan Dennett were arguing about free will.

0:12:09 Thomas: That was a, that was quite an argument. Like that got pretty heated. Actually, there's some insults thrown. They vehemently disagree with each other. There was, you know, there was no real common ground. Like they were they were like, we disagree. You're wrong. No, you're wrong, you know, it was it was a fight. And I don't recall appointment evidence, if you have any, but I don't remember anybody saying, gentlemen, gentlemen. You need to stop. This is drama. This You're both atheists. Stop doing this. We can't drag each other down. That sort of thing, somehow that's just like, well, yes, they're heated. Yes, they are borderline insulting each other. Yes. They disagree, but that's fine. Then when it comes to something like feminism, all of a sudden there are certain things that are out of bounds.

0:13:01 Thomas: There are things that people decide, oh, well, we can agree to disagree on this. And there are things that people say, no, we cannot associate. And that goes both ways. I'm not going to, for a minute, pretend that that's not something that the social justice side does. I mean, absolutely. For example, I will say that for me, I have done this with someone like Stephen Knight. When he has decided he wants to go into MythCon, that's the place he wants to be at, and the things he's said are as horrible as I think they are. I've decided I don't have any interest in that guy. It doesn't mean I think he's wrong about everything he's ever said. I'm sure he says some correct things, but I'm personally, I don't have any interest in him forever, but it's telling who those people are for each of us. You know, I'll, I'LL own that.

0:13:48 Thomas: I'll own that, that, that is something I have done with that particular person. So you can draw conclusions based, based on that, you know, be, be feel free, draw your conclusions about me. But I, I think it is valid to draw certain conclusions about which people we decide are, well, that's an agree to disagree person, but I'll still work with them. And that's someone that's totally disqualified. And I bring it up because of the other little stupid thing that happened. And again, this was Seth Andrews striking first and saying something that I found to be quite alarming. And then if I try to call him out on it or respond, then it's Thomas, what are you doing? Why are you stirring up the drama? Can you stop it with the drama? Go do something else. And that's what gets frustrating.

0:14:34 Thomas: Again, to say it again, with someone, Seth has a wider listenership, and when he takes a jab, and then when you respond, you're told to stop being dramatic. That's what drives me nuts. And what he did was someone had tweeted. Oh, no, it was Kristi Winters, in fact, had just tweeted something positive about Steve Shives and had listed some other people in that list of people that she thought were doing a good job with Me Too. And I was on that list. And Aina, who that's E-I-Y-N-A-H. I always say Aina and people don't know who I'm talking about. But Aina who I hope you've checked out by now. I was in her show. She does some good work. She was on that list. A couple other people were on that list. Kristi just said, hey, shout out to these people. Doing a great job on Me Too.

0:15:19 Thomas: And Seth Andrews on his, again, way bigger following, bigger platform, decided to respond and quote it and say, congratulating shives and other extremists is like hearing someone thank Alex Jones for defending America. That is Seth Andrew, somebody I've talked to, somebody I would have have said as a friend. Uh, and, and that's, that's how he responded to that tweet. So after, uh, Seth Andrews lectured me for like a whole day on my name calling of, of people like Smalley and Knight, which, you know, I think I, I forget if I even talked about that, but okay. He lectured me on that. All right. That's his view. And then he does this like a week later, two, two weeks later, lumping me in with a lot of good people, by the way, uh saying we're extremists and And congratulating Shives and us is like thanking Alex Jones for defending America.

0:16:15 Thomas: Thank Alex Jones. At that point, I'd rather you just call me a name, you know, like I'd rather you say that guy's a shit because that seemed that that was the big thing, the moral high ground that I was told I had lost when I used the word shit to say someone was, was a piece of shit. I thought I'd, I lost the high ground for my bad language, but then doing Doing something like comparing us to Alex Jones and saying we're extremists because of the way we defended against inadequate responses to credible accusations from Krause. I mean, wow. OK, now I get, you know, Seth and Steve Shives, I guess, had some some personal fallings out. And OK, sure. But Kristi, not really.

0:17:01 Thomas: And Ina, who is on that list, has never really interacted with Seth. And she was actually quite puzzled and appalled that she would be included on this list. She was, by the way, the first one listed. So it's weird of him to say that about us. And then I was on the list, of course. And so we tried to respond and I tried to contact Seth about this. Seth is Mr. Talk it out guy. And I texted him. I was like, whoa, why am I on this list? What's going on? And he refused to have any sort of discussion on it. I said we should set up a conversation. He said no, and he hasn't really responded since in any meaningful way. And then Ina, who is always on it on Twitter, pointed out a thread that happened just around the same time where Yasmeen Mohamed is talking about being friends with Ben Shapiro, and then Seth Andrews is chiming in and saying we're all friends and we can all be friends and everything's great.

0:17:57 Thomas: It's possible to disagree and still respect each other, and it's a note that he tends tends to take up when it's a certain kind of person, but not another. And I think this is what's telling. So if you're pretty hardcore conservative, in the case of Ben Shapiro of documented racism, I shared a thread on that on Twitter recently, very disgusting views in a lot of cases. You could be friends. We're friends, you know, agree to disagree. But I can't help but think the cardinal sin here is in expecting someone to behave differently. I really think that seems to be it.

If you have any expectations that Seth or Matt or Sam Harris, if you expect that they should have done better maybe when it comes to Lawrence Krauss, If you expect them to maybe realize some of their behavior might not have been quite right on and quite feminist and quite friendly to the values that they say they have, anyway, that's when you can be disqualified and written off as an extremist and that kind of thing. That's what is frustrating about it. And so I responded on Twitter and I called Seth out. I think he must have probably muted me and whatever, but I'm going to echo it here.

And if anyone wants to signal boost it, I kept it respectful. And the challenge that I threw out there is to Seth, I want to know, okay, if this list of feminists that you've called, you know, deemed extremist, and there's, it's not just us, there's actually some other feminists, that he's decided, okay, they're extremists as well, it's too far.

0:19:33 Thomas: Coincidentally, it's always feminists. It's kind of weird. Those people you don't listen to, okay. I asked him on Twitter, I genuinely mean this, this should not be a hard question at all. Who is a feminist in the movement you do respect? Who is the feminist in the movement who is not an extremist, who you haven't just decided doesn't count. And I'm sure you can come up with somebody. I'm certain you can. I genuinely hope you can, given that you can. Someone mentioned Greta Christina has been on his show, and Seth didn't respond, but someone mentioned that, and I said, you know what, that's great. Okay, that would be a good example. Given that, let's set up a conversation. I would love to hear a conversation with the the feminist that he hasn't yet disqualified from being worth listening to between Seth and that feminist about his and about Matt's and about Sam's responses to the Lawrence Krauss allegations.

0:20:27 Thomas: I think it would be telling. I'm about to see Seth face to face at AACON, I think. So I will say this very thing. I mean, I will be friendly because I think he's a good guy. I am looking forward to hanging out, but I'm going to stick to my guns on this one. I really think what he's doing is not fair, and it's not cool. And just while we're on the topic of all the drama bullshit, there was also a really weird thing that happened in that Matt Dillahunty blocked me. And yeah, that's his right. But here, let me just describe what happened. I'll read every tweet there was. It's very short. All it was was someone tagged Matt in to a Twitter thread and said, I think this is a great idea. This is regarding my challenge to Seth Andrews for a dialogue. Person said. I think that's a great idea.

0:21:12 Thomas: I think dialogue could help this. Callie's discussion with Matt Dillahunty helped me understand his perspective. Then Kristi Winters said, Matt spent more time talking about himself than the Krause problem. Go back and compare how many times he said, I, me, or mine versus victims or women. And I for one strongly agree with that. That was, I found that recording a little disappointing for that reason. It was very much, once again, as I criticized in Matt's stage time with Sam Harris in the wake of the incident, It was once again, all about people who had wronged Matt at a time where I really, I wouldn't have complained. Like you can do all that, but just also say, uh, the evidence supports these accounts. Don't spend all your time agreeing with Sam about how, you know, we got to differentiate these things, all the, all The Critiques I had, but I want to note something about Matt Dill, honey.

0:22:02 Thomas: I think that there's virtually no chance he heard that episode. He doesn't consume other people's shows in any way. He's told me that before, he doesn't. And you know, that's fine. No offense taken or anything about that, but it's very unlikely he ever heard that episode, unfortunately. But anyway, all I said was, I agree with Kristi on this one. And then Matt chimed in. He seems to be active whenever he's tagged into my threads. It's kind of interesting for how many followers he has. But anyway.

He said, "Imagine that. When asked to describe what I thought, why I did, didn't do stuff, how dare I honestly answer the questions I'm asked. Ironic that time is spent whining about me instead of actual issues," to which I responded, "For my part, Matt, I actually do put it on the interviewers to ask you tougher questions. Also note that this complaint about time spent whining is in response to a" single tweet. It seems a bit of an overreaction. And blocked. Oh, man. I don't know. You know, I, it just makes this feel like such an uphill battle, you know. It really does. And that leads me to something else I was thinking about, and I posted, posted about this on my Facebook, by the way, facebook.com slash Thomas podcast, if you'd like to be friends. Uh, but I posted, you know, what is activism? Cause I hear, I've gotten a lot of that lately.

Like when it comes to the peacemaker role, I got that from Seth, you don't know, you, you and, uh, Steven, you're both great activists, you knows, don't name call, was whatever. And, uh, I just, you always thinking about it. What really is activism, and I got, the response was interesting because I was thinking that, like, I think most of what we do is, I mean, it is community building.

0:23:38 Thomas: I'm not an activist really at all. I think that I, the most I could say for atheist activism is that I maybe advance arguments, and I do try to draw attention to things like FFRF, things like actual activists doing real work. But you know, I'm not on the front lines. I'm not doing a lot of the things that I'm encouraging voting. I'm encouraging, encouraging a lot of things that I want to see happen. And in some loose way, I guess that's activism. But so much of, like, "Oh, we're all activists. We're all fighting for a similar cause." I don't know. Aren't we all? We're also just talking and listening to podcasts. So it's like, if we disagree, it's not as though we need to pretend we agree because otherwise we can't all podcast together or something.

0:24:23 Thomas: It doesn't, that doesn't strike me as like that good of an an argument for why you should ignore real disagreement. And then I also was thinking, I think at this point in my career here, in my life, I do value the atheist and skeptical movement a certain amount and in a certain way. I value its potential. I valu it because it's something I was a part of, and it has characteristics that can be really positive. It fights against, against pseudo science I mean, there's...

There's good things about it, but in the wake of 2016, I've said things like this before, but I think this is the first time it really is clear to me, I think I'm actually a progressive activist first and an atheist activist second, and I I think that's, that's what describes it for me. So if someone wants to tell me that I need to get along with a certain person because we're both atheist activists, and I need not criticize someone one because we can't have infighting and drama or whatever, I mean, really, for me, I care about progressive values first and atheist values second, or an atheist community or skeptic community second. Now, when I started, I thought there was little difference between that. I thought there was very little difference.

I was like, well, atheists, basically, the community seems to stand for everything that I value. And then, you know, when it comes to politics, politics, Democrats are kind of into God. And so I feel like I'm a little more atheist than I am a Democrat kind of thing. Now, it's like I would rather lock arms, you know, link arms with a Christian who believes in Black Lives Matter and believes in feminism and Me Too than I would with an atheist who's against those things.

0:26:07 Thomas: I have more in common, that I care about, more things that I think tangibly are going to affect the world, with that Christian who beliefs in Black Lives Matter and feminism and any other number of other issues, than I do with an atheist who doesn't believe those things. I just, I don't care as much about what someone believes about God. I still think religion causes plenty of harm. I think there's, people go too far the other way when, I've seen this a lot actually, when people reject the atheist movement, which they do so for good reasons, then they go on to say, "Well, you know, maybe I was wrong about religion. It's actually fine." No, I didn't really think it's fine. It has a lot of problems, and I'll argue with somebody about it. But I just think that the issues that are affecting everyday people right now in this country, in the US, it's so much more about an anti-progressive sentiment.

0:27:00 Thomas: And just a small example of this, actually, I take it back, a significant example of this is the article and the study that was recently published that the New York Times covered. It. I've mentioned it, I think, but I want to do a deeper dive into it, but I might want to grab an academic. Somebody can help explore it more, but it was very significant.

0:27:21 Thomas: Unprecedented level of tax data, income data, to show that no, it's not about class.

0:27:29 Thomas: I'm sure you saw this. I'll link it in case you didn't. They studied years, probably like 30-something years. I think it was people born between 78 and 82 or something like that. And they studied their incomes and they found that black people, even if they started with a high income and a high-income family, if they're raised in a high income environment, they still drop down in the socioeconomic ladder and white people just don't as much. And there's huge gaps in how that happens. It's not about class. That's a bullshit argument that people have been making forever. And it's something that is on two levels too, because even if it were just about class, I've said this before, even if it were Just about class. There's a reason more people of color are in the lower socioeconomic classes.

0:28:16 Thomas: So it is still unfair to just say it's about class. I mean, someone pointed this out, there were poor white people during slavery. There were plenty of poor white people during slavery. It doesn't mean that they didn't have white privilege. They still had white privilege. Yes, they were poor, but they weren't slaves. And the same thing applies nowadays. Yes, there are are poor white people, of course. There are poor white people. However, the data is now showing, this new data confirms even further that you still have a massive advantage if you're a poor white person than if you are a poor black person. There's all kinds of good nuggets of comparison in this study, in this article. You know, if you, I think there's also something like, if the average wealth, the median wealth is the biggest thing, and they actually don't go into it as much in this study, they talk about income.

0:29:06 Thomas: There's a huge gap in income, but there's also a gigantic gap in wealth. The median wealth for a white couple is like 130,000 or something. And the median wealth for a black couple is, you know, zero. It's like, it's almost nothing. But once again, it's kind of a theme of this show, I guess. There there's not going to be an apology. There is not going be an acknowledgement that, oh, shit, what what black activists have been saying for decades is true. And, you know, as much as I love the Daily podcast, they did a good episode on this, but if you go and listen to it, the tone of like, wow, who knew? No one could have predicted this. You know, the idea that like these things are only valid when finally white people start to acknowledge them.

0:29:52 Thomas: I could see being frustrated about that if you were a black activist. You know, I could see being pretty, pretty frustrated because it's not just a denial. It's vicious counterattacking. If you're, if you're a black person who has said that racism has been keeping black people down, it's Not just agree to disagree. No, no. It's, it'S been smearing. It'S been bootstraps talking about horrible stereotypes, talking about just wanting in government handouts. I mean, all kinds of crap. And then now it's like, oh, nevermind. Okay. Hold on. Now that there's some white people that studied this, we can listen guys. So that is a bit of a sub theme. There's a lot of begrudgingly admitting you were wrong after fighting every inch of the way and dragging people down when, when people were trying to tell you something.

0:30:42 Thomas: And then when you finally acknowledge, okay, okay. Fine. Maybe there is enough evidence about Krauss. All right. Okay. I won't work with him again. Are you happy? Now let's talk about how unreasonable you were toward me. You know, that's, that'S a lot of what we're getting nowadays. And it's frustrating. And I just want to point out the FFRF. I always hold up the FFRF as this shining example of atheist activism. And to my knowledge, they really are doing great work. They had one response on this. They Had one tweet. They said, Hey, we took a vote. Uh, Krause had an honorary spot on our board for like a year or two. We took a vote. He's out because the evidence seems very reasonable. Done. End of story. No one, by the way, no reasonable person that I saw, no one that I saw at all said, okay, that's not good enough, FFRF.

0:31:32 Thomas: You need to insult Krause. You needs to say bad names at him and stuff. Noone thinks that. But that seems to be the go-to every time anytime anyone criticizes Sam or Matt or Seth or anybody for their very tepid initial responses, and by the way, Seth less so. Seth, you know, I had some issues with the way he said, but his was just, if true, this is bad. And then he eventually said, looks like it's true. You know, I don't have that much to say about Seth, but with Matt and Sam, I Had More to Say, as you heard in that episode, but they act like they were just because eventually they got to what seems to be the right response, that that means none of the criticism was warranted at all in how much they dragged their feet. Had they done what the FFRF had done and just said very simply, looks like I think this evidence is overwhelming.

0:32:25 Thomas: We're terminating our relationship. Had they just done that? And by the way, either said nothing like, give me a minute. I need time to think about this. No other statements. That's fine. But what all they did say was undermining of Me Too, was undermining of BuzzFeed, was underlining of just the dozens of named sources in that article. It's just a joke. And yes, there were complaints about it. All right, enough about that. Some people have asked me to talk about this Sam Harris, Ezra Klein thing. And I, you know, I wasn't going to, I didn't have much to say about it until something very interesting did occur to me that I wonder if you'll find interesting. So if you want to get up to speed on this, You're going to have to go. I'm not going to do the whole summary, but I'll do a very quick summary. But if you're not up to speed, read Ezra Klein.

0:33:13 Thomas: I'll link his articles. I think he tells you all the sources you need. And actually, Sam does as well. You can read both sides if you want. But Sam Harris back a year ago had Charles Murray on of the bell curve fame on his podcast. And he didn't just, if you didn't hear it, Sam didn't just have him on and go, well, Charles, what's your point of view on race and IQ? He did a preamble and a speech and like a declaration ahead of time that everyone had gotten this wrong. He comes right out in the beginning of the show. He says, I cannot believe everyone has gotten Charles Murray wrong. He is a scientist. All he is saying is exactly the science. And Sam represented, before the recording and in the intro to the recording, he represents it like everyone is wrong, but you, why don't you just tell everybody why you're right?

0:34:06 Thomas: And it's, it's very, that's a very strong stance. He doesn't do that with a lot of things. You know, even for him, that is a very, it is not really like a skeptical approach. That's a, you've, you know, that's, you're committed to this conclusion and you want to get the word out. Which, okay, that might be acceptable in some circumstances, but when it comes to race and IQ and some of the beliefs and things that Charles Murray has advocated for, that's a really strong stance to take, to put it lightly. Anyway, they represent it as is solid science that there's strong genetic reasons why black people are less intelligent, essentially. Now, there's a light version and there's a strong version. There's a little bit of, I think, retreating to the lighter Murray version, and Ezra Klein points this out well when challenged.

0:34:58 Thomas: So, you can make a small claim that there is some genetic component to IQ, and that is science. Yes, there is some genetic component to IQ. So that's kind of a weaker claim, and it seems to be nobody's really arguing about that. Then there's a stronger claim that the environment cannot explain the difference, the gap in IQ that you see between races. And that's quite a stronger claim. So it wasn't actually Ezra. Vox had some scientists actually do a bit of a rebuttal to this to this podcast. And Sam was, uh, driven mad by this, was really angry at Ezra Klein, called him out and they had some, an exchange.

0:35:44 Thomas: And the only reason it's news again now is there was some article in the New York Times that talked about genetic differences among races for something else. And Sam tweeted it kind of sort of mockingly at Ezra, like, "Oh, time for you to do a takedown about this guy," or whatever. And so the fight started up again, and Sam decided to release their private email exchange when they had discussed maybe doing a podcast together. And Ezra released what I think was just an absolute whammy of an article. It was just really well written, that rehashes this issue and puts it even better, I think. Make sure to read that one. If you read nothing else, read that article, the later Ezra Klein one that he just published a few days ago, because it is really spot on.

0:36:31 Thomas: So they had this whole email exchange. And here's what I want to say about this. Ezra Klein out Sam Harris, Sam Harris essentially, or out. Here's what's so fascinating. That article that ran in Vox was pretty direct, pretty damning. Probably the harshest part was in the subtitle of the article. So, So, and as you guys should probably know, authors don't choose their titles and subtitles. That's something that usually, well, maybe Ezra did. I don't know. I'm not sure who chose the title, but usually the website does. Charles Murray is once again peddling junk science about race and IQ. And then the subtitle is podcaster and author Sam Harris is the latest to fall for it. Pretty harsh. However, what happens in their email exchange is there's a lot.

0:37:20 Thomas: It's long, read it. But one key thing to pick up on, I think, is Sam seems to think this article was incredibly insulting and, explicitly, if not use the exact word, "Sam Harris is a racist," implied that Sam Harris was a racist. And it's so interesting because this puts Sam, tactically, not literally, but tactically, in the exact position I found myself in and other people on the far left have found themselves in when we talk about dog whistling. It's so interesting because if you read back and you read Ezra's responses, the article was actually incredibly careful to never say that Sam Harris was a racist. And they talked about, OK, some people are falling for junk science," and there are different levels of Murrayism, and there's one level, you know, and they dance around it.

0:38:12 Thomas: But they never directly say "this is racist" and "Sam Harris is racist," etc., et cetera, et cetera. They never say it. They imply it. They make it the case for why, you know, certain, if you take certain views, then maybe you are being too caught up in race. But they were very careful. And reading through it, I'm actually amazed at just how much care they took, and just how much care Ezra took. They were exceedingly careful. But there's part of me that just has a tinge of understanding, in sort of an ironic way, for what Sam Harris is going through in this email exchange, because it's, oh, it's so great. It's, this is, I think this is very ironic, very ironic in the actual definitional sense of the word. So Sam Harris keeps trying to get Ezra to essentially admit or to cop to, or to apologize for whatever, to admit to, like, "Yeah, you did a hit piece on me."

0:39:03 Thomas: You did a hit piece on it. And Ezra keeps going back to the language. He says, well, you know, I guess you're talking about this passage and very clearly states that, That, you know, we didn't, we never said Sam Harris is this, you know, they said some people take a pseudoscientific view, et cetera, et cetera. And it's, it's incredible because it's sort of like a gaslighting that happens when you and I, and everybody listening all know that Trump or whoever is doing some racist dog whistling. And we say, that's racist. And then a bunch of people say, well, he never used the words. He didn't say. Hey, he didn't jump out in a Klan outfit and declare that black people were inferior. And what is blowing my mind about this exchange is that if you go to the Reddit for Sam Harris, which my only experience of, I don't have much experience with it, but my only experience of I've been posted about in that Reddit a few times and it's never been good.

0:40:02 Thomas: Now, mind you, there are some people who are moderate fans of mine that are in that Reddit, apparently, but there are also a bunch of people are like, you know, that whiny SJW, "Oh, he's just SJW," blah, blah. So that was kind of my impression of the Reddit. But if you go to that Red, and this is absolutely true, I verified it, the entire day I've been checking back just to make sure nothing nuts is going on, almost nobody is backing Sam Harris in his own Reddit. It's, it's blowing my mind. Now, I think I've got the theory that explains this, I actually do, because one, one theory might be, well, Sam Harris's fans, turns out they aren't racist. Turns out they're actually pretty great. They're skeptical. They aren't fans of Charles Murray. And, you know, there could be some of that. And let me state very clearly, there are people in the red.

0:40:48 Thomas: If you go right now, there aren't people in red. There are people who aren't friends of Charles Murray and think Sam Harris kind of stepped in here. Absolutely. But these things are hard to quantify when I'm trying to get like a feel for how many Sam, because there are defenders as well. Well, but in trying to get a feel for the numbers, the most upvoted comments are not on Sam's side when it comes to this Ezra Klein exchange.

It doesn't necessarily mean that they're all anti-Charles Murray. Some of them are, some of them aren't. But I think what explains this better, and it's just blowing my mind, it's the exact same thing that I run into all the time that I've talked about before. These people think, these Sam Harris fans think, if you get emotional, you lose. Lose if you get angry you lose they think the more calm person is right I think that drives this more than anything else I really do look at the comments and they say well Ezra you know he composed himself and Sam lost his temper and posted the emails without his consent that's a dick thing to do they didn't follow him on that I think That Might Be More Primary I think it explains why they're such big fans of Sam Harris because Sam Harris is nothing if not incredibly calm in the face of very heated debate.

It's actually why I've always liked his debates in particular is he is so composed when he debates. He's a very composed guy. So I think that might be one of the governing reasons why there's such big Sam Harris fans already. And that I think pretty well explains why in his own Reddit, they're not actually taking a side on this.

0:42:21 Thomas: And look at the addendum that Sam Harris had to write. I'm going to read some of this for you. "Judging from the response to this post on social media, my decision to publish these emails appears to have backfired. I was relying on readers to follow the plot and notice Ezra's evasiveness and gaslighting, e.g. his denial of misrepresentations and slurs that are in the very article he published. Many people seem to have judged from his politeness that Ezra was the one behaving honestly and ethically. This is frustrating, to say the least. Many readers seem mystified by the anger I expressed in the email exchange. Why care so much about criticism or even insults? But this has nothing to do with criticism and insults. What has been accomplished in Murray's case, and is being tempted in mine, is nothing less than the total destruction of a person's reputation for the crime of honestly discussing scientific data."

0:43:07 Thomas: Now, I was blown away when I read that because, you know, there's a very easy, naive, "Okay, Sam Harris sucks, I'm on Ezra's side," part to all this, and I get it, I get it. However, I cannot help but read in that little paragraph I just read you and see how identical it is to things I've had to say before, where some racist or sexist douchebag is being perfectly calm, and because they're being calm and I'm saying, "You're a racist," or "You're sexist," or I'm pointing out where they're being problematic in some way, or if not me, it's happened to somebody else, I, by definition, lose because I'm a little less calm. And it is peak irony that Sam Harris is now having to go through this.

0:43:52 Thomas: I think this is very important data. I really think this tells you that that attitude, that bias, as in the bias that calmness equals correctness, I think that's stronger than the hero worship of Sam Harris in, in a lot of these cases. Again, look at the comments. It's, it's overwhelmingly in favor of Ezra in this blog post to the point where Sam had to even publish this note here and say, well, it backfired. I think that conception of calmness equals correctness or whatever, or emotion or, or the advice versa, which is emotion equals wrong. I Think that is fundamental. And I, you know, I wouldn't have necessarily thought thought that. I would have thought that fans of Sam Harris would say, oh yeah, look at that.

0:44:37 Thomas: He totally, clearly Ezra implied, or the article implied, that he was a racist, and Ezra was just dodging it. And there are a few, but I'm surprised that there aren't more, to be, to be honest. It's absolutely mind-blowing to me. And I think that that tells you, and it tells me, I think that this is really interesting data to me, because it tells me that that bias might be so strong that it overwhelms even Sam Harris fandom. And God knows there's a lot of Sam Harris fandom. I mean, we've run into that. So, I don't know. I mean, this might make me rethink some tactics. I mean, it truly might be best for me anyway, especially because I can exercise some of my privilege in that I'm not having my personhood questioned and my dignity questioned most of the time.

0:45:24 Thomas: I mean, sometimes I am on Twitter, but that's okay. I can exercise my privilege and maybe I ought to have stuck to that, you know? Maybe I ought to have done my best to go all Spock-like and maybe that would have done the most good, you know. Doesn't make it right. Absolutely doesn't make it right, I think this is wrong. And I think it's a system that perpetuates the status quo because, if I haven't already said this, people who are going to be emotional are going to be the ones who have faced the most trauma and the most injustice, etc., etc. Those are not going to Be white men. White men are going to be the ones who are going to be able to sit, detach, debate things. Let's see, do black people have lower IQs?

0:46:10 Thomas: Well, let's talk. Let's rationally discuss. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Why are you getting emotional about this? Let's just talk about it like, uh, like rational folk. It's always going to privilege people who aren't facing any kind of challenges like that, because those are going to be, tend to be the people, not in every case, but it's going to tend to be the people who are able to just kind of float detached. Let's, you know, let's, let's examine this. I really think this is true. I think this explains a lot. I really do. I think that's a major hurdle in terms of, uh being taken seriously, uh getting the status quo folk, the majority folk to pay attention. Uh, and it's, it's depressing. And there's a small part of me that even though I, I think Ezra is a hundred percent right on, especially in his last article, there's this small part, there is a small, there is a little small part to me that I understand, you know, I under, I understand what happened with Sam in this email exchange.

0:47:06 Thomas: I, you know I get it because tell you what, raise your hand. If back in May when this first Vox article went up, how many of you shared it and said Sam Harris is a racist and cited that article as proof? Honestly, I know a lot of people who did. I know a ton of people did. So Sam sees all kinds of people sharing this Vox Article and essentially quote tweeting it and saying, oh, look, racist Sam Harris. And I just, you know, the article didn't explicitly say that. It didn't. It was very careful. But in the end, maybe don't have Charles Murray on your show and do a pre-show introduction of this guy is the way, the truth, the light, and he cannot be challenged.

0:47:53 Thomas: He is science. Maybe don't do that. That would be a good way to avoid this scenario in the future. But the underlying dynamics there, I think, are very interesting. Absolutely fascinating. I really think that that explains so much of this fandom. I think they're fans of Sam Harris's calm first and foremost, and he lost his calm. And I think he lost His fan base in that. So really interesting. All right, that's my show. Thanks so much for listening. I really appreciate it. Again, I'm going to be at AACon and then the following week I'm going to see you in Milwaukee for Brew City Benefit. And you know what? We're coming up to a new month and there's going to be only one likely only one public show per week now, uh, as I announced earlier.

0:48:38 Thomas: Now I, what I'm going to do is I'm, there will be more patron only shows. So there'll be, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do my best to make it worth your while, patrons, uh, in that you'll still have a lot of content, but just more of it's going to be only for patrons. So all I'd ask you patrons, and again, that's at seriouspod.com/support or patreon.com/seriouspod. All I'd asked is, you know, give it, give it a month. See if you like it. If you're worried about the, uh, slight reduction in content, then talk to me, you know, uh email me. I will absolutely work with you. Uh, we can do whatever you want to do. My email Thomas at seriouspod, always open to you. Fine info to all of you, but specifically supporters. If you got any questions or concerns, email thomasatseriouspod.com or, you know, find me on Facebook.

0:49:28 Thomas: Facebook Messenger is another good way to reach me. Twitter, nah, screw Twitter. It's terrible now. All right. Very much looking forward to seeing some of you this weekend. Say hi. Thanks so much for listening, everyone. See ya.