Sam Harris' Destructive IQ Pseudoscience

In this 'The Michael Brooks Show' clip, Sam Harris pushes pseudoscience because he's a pseudointellectual.

"I’m not mad at Sam Harris. I’m just enforcing the scientific principle without fear or favor. If you’re a medical doctor, we expect you to be up to date on your view of the body. A neurosurgeon who went about trepanning people for headaches would lose his license. Does Sam’s poor quality PhD free him for all time from updating his beliefs in light of evidence? Isn’t that what he wants from Christians and Muslims? Isn’t it reasonable to expect that as a public figure he practice what he preaches? And if Sam isn’t being scientific when he is attacking religion, then what is he doing? I think he’s rationalizing the prejudices of his W.E.I.R.D. culture and blindly following cultural intuitions he picked up from his family. In that sense, he’s no different than most people. That however isn’t what science is about."*

[Wasp_Y]

Do you think this video refutes something Sam Harris or Charles Murray said?

[brswsc]

The notion that psychometrics can prove genetic differences among groups with wildly different experiences and backgrounds is...sort of funny it's so stupid. If we were comparing litters of rats in some experiment, and we said that we reared Group A in a completely different manner than than Group B, then measured some difference between A and B, and then inferred that the difference must be genetic, every other scientist would laugh their ass off.

[aserioussalamander]

wow did you guys even take high school science?

[richardwise]

This video is what putting political dogma over scientific evidence looks like.

[specificislander]

The only thing Sam Harris is good at is arrogance

[stefanbatory]

So, what exactly is the argument here? "I don't like the results, so this should not be researched nor talked about"?

They also seem not to understand the difference between qualitative and quantitative traits.

[robrobbins]

I have cherry picked some nice cherries from pseudoscience to support my views. Democracy means everyone is free to choose their own science.

[HarryPainter]

Sam Harris and Charles Murray never said anything about a link between melanin and intelligence. No one argues that melanin is the decisive factor, including racists.

[thepokekid]

This is a problem that is greater than science, it just also gets applied to science as religion grows less popular, people use science as a religion. That's wrong thinking, Science does not tell you what to do, it just tries to explain why something happens and helps you to predict other events. It is amoral. That said, without knowing it, so many people do treat it that way, but that is the problem in that banning Religion doesn't actually solve, because this aspect of confirming our own beliefs and bias are some kind of human nature. We are always going to find some what of doing that, and we are always going to find some way to Manipulate those views to amass power.

It's not a bad thing or a good thing, but it is important to be able to recognize.

[michaelberta]

Larry Bird can out dunk Michael Jordan. We don't need a competition to prove it. The fact that it is just apparent, is proof enough.

[ryanp]

Group differences in ability are likely a result of some mix of environment and genes = Pseudoscience
But the assumption that those differences are 100% environment is rock solid science?

[sansabasongbird]

I like both Sams. As an Atheist, I appreciate Harris’s critiques of religion in general. I don’t follow him down the marmot hole of Murray’s views. I also don’t extend my critiques of religion to disqualify groups of people from becoming Americans. Being an American is a political act of will, regardless of religion. I like Seder for his exposure of Libertarianism as a bankrupt and dangerous political philosophy. There are few pundits on this medium which I agree with on most issues. Let ideas flow, let criticism of ideas flow.

[AZOffRoadster]

Epigenetics seems to be a topic never discussed, mostly because it would have to cover both the source and the victim.

[sodadeconstruct]

"link between melanin and intelligence"


Oh nice, another claim that no one has ever made--or would ever make. Lets pretend that's the argument, it's more fun to argue against :D

[McBackstabber]

"Humanitys first family dinner."
Ooh that's good.

[phildirt]

System Of A Down wrote a song exactly about this. It's aptly called "Science."

[bens]

Sam Harris, who holds a PhD in cognitive neuroscience from the University of California, is a "pseudointellectual." How convenient.

[sneifert]

Excellent point about people clinging to single sources, citing the same source over and over. If I've heard Sam Harris cite the same pew research study once, I've heard him cite it a million times.

[MarkAhlquist]

The same complaints about how science works is also used by climate change deniers.

[mattgilbert]

Hunter made a lot of sense here. Calm, reasonable, critical, well-informed, clear headed.
Murray is a stooge. He obviously has a political agenda. Is Harris that naive?