Paige Harden is a professor at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of The Genetic Lottery, a book about the role of genes in shaping human behavior. In this episode, she joins me to talk about her journey to becoming a scientist, her background as a writer, and why she thinks genetics should not be seen as the enemy of equality. We also talk about why we re talking about genetics at all, and what it means when we say, equality. And why it s important that we talk about it in the first place, especially in the context of the current state of the science and technology we're living in. We also discuss why we should be talking about it at all and why it's important to have a conversation about it, and how we should do it. This episode was produced by Sam Harris and Alex Blumberg at the Center for Sociology and Ethics at UT Austin, and edited by David Rothkopf at The New York Review of Books. Our theme music was made by Micah Vellian and Sarah Abdurrahman. Our ad music is by Joseph McDade at the Electric Light Orchestra, courtesy of Lotuspool Records, and our theme music is courtesy of Epitaph Records, which you can stream on SoundCloud, and we've been working on a new album called "Spooky Action" on the project called "The Good Word" by The Good Word Project, which is out now! and is available on all major podcast directories, including Audible, iTunes, Podcoin, and Podcoin.org, and The Huffington Post, and is also available on amazon, Podcrush, and Audible.org. . Thanks for listening to the Making Sense Podcast, and Good Mythology. and Good Word. Thank you so much for listening, Good Word, Spooky Action! Make sure to subscribe to The Making Sense and Good Thing by Good Word by The Bad Word by Spooky Word, Good Thing, Good Idea by Good Idea, and SpookyAction, Good Day by Vox Media, and all three of us at Making Sense, Good Things by Vox, Good Mythical by Good Thing Media, Good Luck, Bad Word, and Thank you for Listening to the Podcast by Vox and Good Trouble by Vox Klein and Good Morning by Mr. Bad Idea by Dr. Dick Nisbet, and Thanks to You, Sarah Terkheimer, and Dr. David Badger.
00:03:24.180It's such an, it feels very antiquated in relation to the immediacy of everything else that's happening right now.
00:03:30.800Well, you know, lucky for you, inequality is still going to be a problem after 11 months.
00:03:34.760So it will not be less relevant, I'm sure.
00:03:37.300So there's something I'd like to ask at the outset here, because I'm pretty confident that you and I are coming to this conversation from very different places,
00:03:48.320just with very different frames around what it means to have this conversation.
00:03:52.640I think we were, our glitch on Twitter was born of that difference.
00:03:57.320So at the outset, I'd love to get your impression of why we're speaking now and just what's happened between us.
00:04:05.520Because, you know, we've never met, as far as I know.
00:04:07.460I don't think we've ever bumped into each other at a conference or anything.
00:04:10.180And yet we're entangled in some way now.
00:04:14.460So from your point of view, how did we get here and what is your motive in having this conversation?
00:04:21.580So, I mean, entangled is a good word for it.
00:04:24.960You know, spooky action at a distance.
00:04:26.800The origin of this is, you know, you had a podcast with Charles Murray, I think going on two years ago now.
00:04:35.400And I wrote an article with my former PhD advisor, Eric Terkheimer, and social psychologist Dick Nisbet in Vox that was critical of Murray's portrayal of the state of the science, is how I viewed that article.
00:04:54.000And then there was reactions to that article, and then our response to those reactions.
00:05:00.520There was yet another piece on the same topic by Ezra Klein.
00:05:03.800There was multiple conversations between you and Klein about whether our Vox piece, the substance of it and whether soliciting it and publishing it was in good faith.
00:05:14.380And honestly, the aftermath of that, you know, publishing of the Vox piece never sat well with me.
00:05:24.220I think in many ways, the parts of it I wrote in my head as I was writing it was very much me as a scientist responding to what I thought Murray was portraying inaccurately.
00:05:37.620And then I think as the article got published and sort of reverberated through social media, and as you know, as well as I do, that that has this weird funhouse mirror distortionary effect on conversations.
00:05:49.640It seemed that you felt criticized in a way that, to be quite honest, surprised me, kind of the intensity of it.
00:05:58.920Something was being lost in my intention and how it was being received.
00:06:02.240And so, you know, I kind of left that whole thing with a, that didn't go how I would have wanted it to go.
00:06:09.700And I don't feel like I communicated the messages that I was intending to with the precision that I wanted to.
00:06:17.240And then fast forward to, you know, the most recent week, you had Robert Plowman on your podcast to talk about his new book, Blueprint.
00:06:24.760And, you know, I had what I think is a very kind of social media moment in which I am responding to someone else's comment on, you know, what, what are we all going to do as parents around school closures?
00:06:39.820And someone responded with, oh, well, you need to listen to Sam Harris's new podcast, because then you'll realize that going to school doesn't matter.
00:06:48.160And it was, it was, it was such an, it was such an alarming tweet and with some backstory that, you know, I've known Robert Plowman for quite a long time.
00:06:58.640I respect him immensely as a scientist, but the role of whether or not schools and parents make a difference is, is a topic about which we've had multiple conversations with public and private and about which we disagree.
00:07:10.660So there really was just kind of like full circle moment in which I felt like, oh, are we, are we back here talking about someone was on Sam Harris's podcast and, and how that's, how that information is being received by your audience and how I'm responding to it.
00:07:29.040And then I have to be really honest. I was really surprised when you responded on Twitter. I think I had this idea in my head that your platform is so enormous and there are so many people responding to you at any one time that the extent to which what I was saying about not even in that moment, I wasn't even, as you know, responding to the podcast, but so much to this, you know, anonymous person who was saying, oh, you should listen to it.
00:07:56.360Because then you will realize that schools don't matter. Just really, you know, it was really upsetting to me in that moment. And it really kind of kicked off our, I think, sense, at least I have the sense of sort of having unresolved, unresolved, to go back to your original word, unresolved entanglement, that we're both interested in these issues, that the conversation really was not between you and me the last time around the Vox article.
00:08:19.740And I think maybe something was lost in that and how that played out. So I'm hoping that by having this conversation, we, you know, we will each get something out of it, learn something about our respective perspectives, but also that we can move forward.
00:08:36.600I mean, I'm not, I don't think that you're going to move away from being interested in these issues. And certainly I'm not, I mean, as you say, in 11 months, inequality is still going to be a problem. And I'd like to move forward feeling like there's a mutually respectful relationship. And that wasn't what was playing out on Twitter. So that's kind of where I'm, I'm really hoping this conversation goes today.
00:08:56.600Nice, nice. Yeah, we definitely share the goal there. And another thing we share, I'm sure, given everything you've just said, is, is a concern about social inequality and social cohesion and just the suffering of other people. I'm sure we both want other people to thrive, both because we care about other people, but also just for purely selfish reasons.
00:09:23.940I'm sure we both would much prefer to live in a society that is filled with happy, self-actualized people. And, you know, I trust you don't like to see the sidewalks filled with homeless people any more than I do. And I mean, again, both for the sake of the people themselves and for our own quality of life, right?
00:09:42.260So I think everyone has an interest in these issues. And so, you know, everyone, whether they're thinking about it or not, has an interest in things like wealth inequality and the crazy disparities in crime and access to health care in our society and failing schools.
00:10:00.260And, you know, in so far as racism remains a problem and the cause of other problems. I think you and I are both concerned about racism. I think it's safe to say, but I think I should say a couple of things about how I'm coming to these issues that will explain what was otherwise surprising about my reaction to your Vox piece.
00:10:22.840One, my reaction and my non-reaction. I mean, one, I didn't actually answer. I didn't respond to your Vox piece. And many people thought I should have because many people saw it as a serious scientific criticism of a conversation I had on my podcast.
00:10:37.340And, you know, I must say, I didn't view it that way. And that's why I didn't respond, among other things. And so, you know, so let me see if I can just launch into an account of what has happened here for me and explain just what, you know, what would otherwise seem like bizarre behavior.
00:10:55.920First, I think we should distinguish two topics here. I mean, there's the scientific topic of human intelligence and, you know, differences in human abilities generally.
00:11:07.480You know, whether we explain these differences environmentally or genetically or both, all of that is interesting and consequential and important to talk about honestly. And there's that topic.
00:11:17.360But then there's this sociological and political fact that it's difficult to talk about these things. Right. And it's. Yeah. And so those are two very different things. And I have been I'm really brought to this topic mostly because of my focus on the second topic.
00:11:37.860I mean, that's certainly why I had Murray on my podcast. So. So, so, again, just to be clear, we need to distinguish certain scientific topics from the fact that talking about the science, right, is rightly perceived, I think, to be professionally dangerous and personally toxic.
00:11:56.080That is, unless one is committed to maintaining a certain kind of political correctness, more or less at all costs here.
00:12:02.680Yeah. So, so, so if I can just jump in there really quickly is, is I, I roughly agree with that division, but I think, and we can come, we can circle back to this. I think failures in either make the other more difficult in the sense that like, if we can't speak, you know, openly and honestly about the science that makes doing the science harder.
00:12:25.520But I think also people, you know, our responsibility to talk about the science as clearly as possible is part of what I think of the scientists contribution to sort of keeping cancel culture at bay.
00:12:38.880Like, so I think I agree with the division that you can sort of think of those two issues, but I think they do affect each other in the real world in kind of this continuous basis.
00:12:48.820Yeah, except I think you and I will draw that boundary a little differently. And I can argue about why I draw the boundary as I do, because it's, I think it's important. I think any principle other than intellectual honesty that would cause us to make certain scientific claims is very nature going to be unstable and, and prove to be a, a bad bulwark against the kind of social outcomes that I think you and I both would recoil from.
00:13:18.460Right. So yeah, I think, I think we'll probably get into that. But I mean, just again, for context, I think I said this at the top, I mean, you and I were brought together by a moderator who wants to remain anonymous and inaudible in this conversation.
00:13:32.720We have someone on the line with us who, you know, hasn't yet chimed in, but may yet chime in and we will edit out those intrusions.
00:13:40.420And this person wants to remain anonymous because they, and I'm using they to conceal gender, not to say that they are transgender, they perceive this whole topic to be so fraught that they are concerned that this might blow back on them or institutions with which they're associated.
00:14:02.980That's just a sign of the times, right? You and I just may calibrate our, we obviously calibrate our sense of the risk differently, but that's the nature of the context in which we're having this conversation.
00:14:15.780I don't, I just want to say I don't disagree with our anonymous third participant. You know, I, I have been in the field of behavior genetics, essentially my whole adult life. You know, I went to, I applied for graduate school when I was 20 years old.
00:14:32.840And so I, that sense of this thinking about how genetics relates to inequalities between people and what implications that has for our, our policies, for our nation, our sort of, our intuitions about justice and fairness is really strikes at the heart of so many issues that people feel passionately about.
00:14:57.880And by virtue of being an explosive topic requires communicating about it with great care. And I think if you're going to do it, you have to do it well. And to say, well, I'm willing to be interested in this issue, but I'm not going to drag a whole bunch of other people, you know, by virtue of my association with them into that, into that morass.
00:15:19.720I mean, I, I agree that there are potential implications, even just in terms of time for anyone being sort of associated with this conversation.
00:15:28.360Yeah. Yeah. All of that is ultimately unnecessary, not, not surprising, but unnecessary. And I think whatever political daylight we eventually land in that is stable will be born of our having discovered that this is really not a problem.
00:15:49.720To talk about, right. And, and, and, and, and that's where I'm hoping to get to, but the strategies I see other people using, I think are bound to be ineffective and they have the, the additional problem of being, of creating a lot of casualties of another sort along the way.
00:16:05.660And so, yeah. So just to give you some color to my experience here, first, you know, I, you know, I'm interested in intelligence, both human and artificial, but I've never been interested in IQ per se.
00:16:21.300And I'm, I'm certainly not interested in racial differences in IQ, but I've grown extremely concerned about the way our capacity for moral panic has made it difficult to have honest conversations in general about, you know, just all kinds of topics having nothing to do with, with behavioral genetics or intelligence, or I mean, just across the board.
00:16:41.720And I mean, talking about religion, for instance, or differences among religions. And I really don't like scapegoating and mob justice. And this is the kind of thing one encounters on this topic.
00:16:54.620So, as you said, you know, two years ago, I brought Charles Murray on my podcast, for reasons around these free speech concerns, right? I mean, this was in response to his being physically attacked at Middlebury, you know, a full quarter century after he, he wrote his controversial book, The Bell Curve.
00:17:11.200And I can say that having that conversation with him has had a profoundly negative effect on my life, right? And it's not because anything Charles said or did. And it's entirely because of what other people said and did in response to that conversation.
00:17:30.180And, you know, some of that was foreseeable, you know, certainly should have been foreseeable. And, you know, to some degree, I consciously took this on as something that, you know, I just, I felt a moral obligation to respond to what I perceived to be both an injustice in his case, and a creeping dysfunction in our intellectual life.
00:17:51.780And the fact that you have professors being assaulted on college campuses for highly distorted ideas about what they wrote 25 years ago. And you were one of the principal people who contributed to this backlash by publishing that article in Vox, right, along with, as you said, Richard Nisbet and Eric Terkheimer.
00:18:10.960And now you may not think it was a smear, but in my world, it absolutely was, right? I mean, and it gave Ezra Klein, the scientific cover or the seeming scientific cover to publish other smears of me and Murray in Vox.
00:18:28.940And it's one thing to differ about, you know, specific interpretations of data, say, but the reality is, is that that article accused me and Murray, I mean, I think you thought your emphasis was mostly on Murray, and it was, but I mean, virtually every sentence, you know, I was wrapped up there as part of the problem.
00:18:50.100You accused us of peddling junk science, right? And the best interpretation of how I came out in that article was as Murray's dupe, right? Like, I just, you know, I was just, I didn't understand the science, and he put one over on me.
00:19:05.480But the more reasonable interpretation of the article was that I was more of a willing accomplice in the spread of dangerous and discredited ideas. And whatever you thought your take on my podcast with Murray was, and whatever topspin you thought you were giving the part of the article you wrote or not, you know, and however much daylight there might be between you and Nisbet and Terkheimer,
00:19:32.360the net result of that article was to land me on the hate watch page at the Southern Poverty Law Center in the company of neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan lunatics, right?
00:19:46.160Whether or not you thought it was a smear, in the current environment, it absolutely functioned as a smear, right? And it is, when I, you know, pinged you on Twitter the other day, what I was really responding to was, I mean, I was responding to two things.
00:20:01.080You're seeming outraged that I would, quote, platform Robert Plowman, right? Which, using the phrase platform in response to my putting a person who's inarguably one of the leading people in the field on my podcast seemed bizarre to me and seemed of a piece with the article you had written about me and Murray.
00:20:18.960But you resurfaced your Vox article, right? Which, again, in my world, functions as for people who don't get into it, people who can't take the time to listen to a two-hour podcast and don't have enough understanding of the topic to see, as I think I do, the mismatch between your article and what, you know, I and Murray actually said in that podcast.
00:20:39.560That article functions as scientific proof, essentially that I'm a racist asshole, or at least dangerously irresponsible in my platforming a racist asshole on my podcast.
00:20:56.540And that's just an objective statement about how this thing functions in my life.
00:21:01.920And so to see you retweet it and then take a shot at me for having, quote, platformed Robert Plowman, you got a somewhat snide response from me on Twitter.
00:21:11.600Like, really, Paige? And you did this all without listening to the podcast with Robert Plowman? Man, that's amazing, right?
00:21:17.660So, you know, some people think I'm just being thin-skinned and, you know, I can't take criticism of my views.
00:21:24.620That's not what's happening. I mean, unless you see what's coming back at me on a daily basis and see the effect in my life and in the lives of others.
00:21:34.360I mean, the truth is, I have taken immense pains to be uncancelable, right?
00:21:42.820So I'm an incredibly lucky person, right?
00:21:46.480I just, you know, I have very few complaints about my life, but this is definitely one.
00:21:51.940I mean, I recognize that because of what happened there and in large measure because of the article you wrote and then what Ezra Klein did with it,
00:21:59.920it may well be the case that 30, 40 years from now, when I die at the end of a long and happy life,
00:22:07.680my daughters will read that, you know, I was persistently dogged by accusations of racism or something completely insane,
00:22:15.060given what I actually feel about race and racism and what it would mean to live in a just society.
00:22:21.560And the causality of that is absolutely apparent to me, given the social forces and the social incentives and the biases I see around this conversation.
00:22:30.840So that's who you were meeting on Twitter the other day.
00:22:34.140Yeah, okay, so I have a couple responses to that.
00:22:38.900And the first is just, you know, that helps me understand more about kind of the tenor of your response.
00:22:48.140Because thinking about it in terms of how my article, but particularly how that article was picked up and reverberated and interpreted
00:22:57.000to ultimately lead to you being, you know, clustered with neo-Nazis, you know, obviously I can see how that would be deeply upsetting.
00:23:06.000When I, what I feel like this brings up for me is there's, there's a kind of ironic parallel here in the sense that you're saying, you know, you wrote this thing and you didn't intend for it to, you know, lead to other people casting aspersions on me as a, you know, as a racist or as a Nazi.
00:23:27.660But it had that effect, given the social environment that we live in and the way that journalism works, you know, so don't you bear some responsibility for how that, that criticism was used?
00:23:41.280It's not as inadvertent as all that, because, I mean, honestly, the only, I mean, I should just give you a little more color for what I think about the article.
00:23:50.380I mean, the only way to interpret the article is that Murray and I, again, it's more Murray.
00:23:54.720I mean, I'm sort of showcasing his views, but, you know, I was also signing off on many of the things he was claiming and, you know, you made that clear in the article.
00:24:03.800But the frame you gave it is that these are dangerous, well-known to be discredited views.
00:24:12.400I mean, it wasn't totally coherent, because in one paragraph you guys say, you know, the truth is there are many scientists whose views are much closer to Murray's than to ours, and we don't even have the same views, right?
00:24:22.640So, like, you did sort of pay lip service to the idea that there is a continuum of views about, now we're talking about the heritability of intelligence and just how, and group differences in intelligence here.
00:24:36.780So you paid a little lip service to it, but basically the general thrust of the article was that this is junk science, and it's dangerous, it's irresponsible, and it is of a piece with a long history of awful justifications for racism, you know, pseudoscientific justifications for racism and bigotry and slavery and all the rest.
00:24:59.420And we're now part of that, and so there's no way to say, I mean, I hear where you're going, you think that I'm trying to hold you responsible for the completely inadvertent interpretations that some people have made of your article, but most of it is there in the article.
00:25:18.160And there is no commitment to racism and no cover for white supremacy given in my framing of Murray, or honestly, even, I mean, this is what we'll get into this, but even in what I understand to be Murray's views.
00:25:35.420So, I mean, I think this is, yeah, so, I mean, just for our listeners who have not read the article or listened to the podcast, you know, I think, and also just to give a little bit of backstory is, I think many times people who respond to Charles Murray's basic thesis, which is that one, IQ tests have predicted validity for things we care about, that individual differences in intelligence are substantially heritable.
00:26:05.420And that group differences between racial, ethnic groups and IQ are likely genetic in origin.
00:26:14.100And then four, that because of that, things will be, you know, the kind of, we have some pessimism about the possibilities of social policy.
00:26:21.980Go back to three for one second, because this is a crucial distortion in your article that was just unnecessary.
00:26:30.560And, I mean, it's there for anyone who wants to go back and read your article and then listen to the two-hour podcast.
00:26:36.160And at the time, I assumed most people would do that and they'd be able to do that.
00:26:39.820But, of course, that's a ridiculous assumption.
00:26:41.540And most people just either read the article and didn't take the time to listen to the podcast or, you know, having listened to the podcast, they read the article and they couldn't remember what was in the podcast.
00:26:51.440And most important, people are so desperate to believe that Charles Murray is a racist monster and that this whole topic of racial differences in IQ is radioactive for a very good reason,
00:27:03.000that they're overwhelmingly biased just to accept the claims you made in that article at face value.
00:27:08.560But the claim you just made, that Murray puts, I think it was your point number three, you just enumerated, that Murray thinks this explanation for racial differences in IQ is very likely to be mostly genetic.
00:27:31.160In the podcast, several places in that podcast, we spelled out why even if intelligence is 80% heritable, say, you could not say that the differences between groups was due to genetics.
00:27:46.760In fact, it could be 100% environmental.
00:27:48.780And I think in the podcast, I use the analogy to height.
00:27:51.980You know, you could have an island of people who have the genes to be as tall as the Dutch, but if they were malnourished, you know, and you found them to be shorter than the Inuit, it would be 100% due to environment.
00:28:04.980And when I made that particular caveat, Charles Murray, his first sentence was, that's a crucial point, right?
00:28:12.280I mean, the irony is that there's a tiny substantive difference between you, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but in my understanding of your view,
00:28:20.760and again, I don't know what distinguishes you from Nisbet and Turkheimer on this point, if anything, but the only difference between what you're arguing for and what Murray is arguing for is what we might call a default hypothesis with respect to the role that genes play in group difference, right?
00:28:40.540And this is actually something that Richard Hare brought out.
00:28:44.500So Richard Hare, who I don't know, I've only spoken to him once, and I, you know, never met him, and he unsolicited responded to your Vox piece, right?
00:28:55.240Richard Hare is the editor-in-chief of the journal Intelligence, and he's the author of the book, The Neurobiology of Intelligence, right?
00:29:01.360And so he's a person who's in this field, and he came out of the woodwork in response to your Vox piece, and Ezra Klein, I mean, just so people understand how the sausage of, in my view, defamation gets made,
00:29:14.560Ezra Klein refused to publish that response from Hare, you know, as though he had run out of pixels on the Vox website.
00:29:20.580And then Richard Hare wrote a follow-up response to your second piece in Vox, which also Vox refused to publish.
00:29:27.480But the point he made is that for people in the field, in the field of intelligence, and you may have a, you clearly have a different view of this, but this was his view, again, unsolicited,
00:29:38.020is that the default hypothesis is that for a highly heritable trait, individually, like intelligence, it's a safe default assumption that genes will play some role, some, not the majority role, just some involvement in group differences.
00:29:57.920And this was Murray's point in the podcast. Otherwise, to have a different default assumption, to say that we're going to default to, it's a hundred percent environment, and genes play absolutely no role whatsoever, right?
00:30:11.720You just, it seems like, it's an assumption you need to argue for. I mean, this is a, a minuscule difference in terms of, in terms of what someone's finding plausible.
00:30:23.660I don't think it's a minuscule difference.
00:30:26.640Do you not think it's a minuscule difference because of your judgment of scientific plausibility, or because of your concern for the social effects of one assumption versus the other?
00:30:41.980Because of the science, I would say because of the depth of evidence for it as a scientific hypothesis.
00:30:50.540So this is, I mean, this is a really, I think this is a really, really unintuitive point.
00:30:58.080You know, we can, we can talk about how if within a group, differences between people are caused by genes,
00:31:06.440and differences between groups could still be due to the environment.
00:31:11.960But I think lurking behind there, there's still this intuition that, well, but how plausible is that?
00:31:20.860And if there were genetic differences, you know, they would obviously work in the same direction that we see, you know, in the case of phenotypic differences, right?
00:31:32.560So I think it sounds, it sounds so, so plausible to call it a default, to say, well, we know that genes cause intelligence differences within, within white people.
00:31:49.320We know, we know that there's phenotypic differences on average and IQ between racial groups.
00:31:55.400Shouldn't our, like, our kind of running null hypothesis, you know, our prior, given, given the absence of any good evidence either way,
00:32:05.120shouldn't our prior be that the genes are also involved in the group differences?
00:32:11.020And I think that that, that, that idea of what our prior should be is really based on, like, a very basic statistical misunderstanding.
00:32:23.880I mean, according to Richard Hare, this is the default hypothesis among intelligence researchers.
00:33:09.240But if you look at the paper, you see, okay, well, here's a genetic variant that makes people more likely to develop bad complications from COVID and to die from COVID.
00:33:19.980And then if you look at the worldwide distribution of that gene, you'll see that it's, it's absent in Africans because, you know,
00:33:26.720they do not have a significant proportion of Neanderthal genetic ancestry.
00:33:30.560So, you have an example of within people of European ancestry, we can look and we can say, here's a gene that's associated with this response.
00:33:42.740And then if you looked at the phenotypic differences in, you know, bad outcomes from COVID across groups of people,
00:33:52.640you might, using Heyer's default hypothesis logic, say, well, genes cause, you know, this gene causes bad COVID response in white people.
00:34:05.880There's so much worse, uh, medical outcomes in black people.
00:34:10.020It must be that part of this difference between them is genetically caused.
00:34:15.520And what's more, it's because they have more of this genetic risk that we're seeing, but in fact, they have none of it, right?
00:34:22.220It's like, it is, it, the genetic differences that we're seeing within people of European ancestry cannot explain at all the differences we're seeing between white people and black people in terms of their medical outcomes.
00:34:36.080And what's more, it goes in the opposite direction as you would expect based on the within person genetic differences.
00:34:43.320So that's not specific to discussion of intelligence.
00:34:48.000That's not specific to a discussion of IQ.
00:34:50.480It's a really, really, really basic statistical point, which is that if you know the direction of an association within a group, you don't know anything about whether that plays out between groups, not even in the sign of that direction, right?
00:35:06.140So it could be that, you know, let's say, actually Africans are at a genetic advantage for cognitive ability that's been swamped by, you know, environmental risks and adversity.
00:35:19.800And I think once you realize that that's not just, that's not just about IQ, that's about, you know, that was labeled as the ecological fallacy.
00:35:27.880That's like a kind of basic statistical point.
00:35:29.940You really, where I've come to is that we have no information, no default about what is the relationship between differences in genetic ancestry and the causes of these, these cognition differences that we see on average between groups.
00:35:54.520And in the absence of any data, any really good data, the only priors we have are informed by what, right?
00:36:03.780And so that's why I think the prior that there is a genetic difference and what it's more, it works in this particular direction, is not informed by the science.
00:36:16.720And that's the part that I really, I don't think that's a minor disagreement.
00:36:20.780So I think if we look at the evidence for how much does IQ statistically predict life outcomes in people, there is a huge amount of evidence there and people might not like to hear it, but we can, we can talk objectively about what that means.
00:36:37.860When we're talking about what is a reasonable prior in terms of our explanations for group differences in performance and standardized IQ tests.
00:36:47.700I don't think, I don't agree with the framing that the, what has been called the default hypothesis is actually a reasonable prior, because I think that's based on a really basic misunderstanding of what knowledge within groups tells us about, about causes between groups.
00:37:03.200So I, you know, I think that's tricky to describe because default hypothesis sounds like such a reasonable, you know, reasonable norm, but I don't, I don't think it's agnostic enough about what we, what we know.
00:37:18.640Okay. So now I'm going to, I mean, all of that's interesting and useful. And for me, again, it falls into the bin of being what I think is a very minor difference in scientific intuition, which we can continue to drill down on.
00:37:36.000And I think it's interesting. It's actually, it's contained in the analogy I just gave to height. You know, if we find an, an island of short people, they may in fact have the genes that point in the opposite direction, right? Entirely.
00:37:50.360They may have the Dutch, you know, super tall genes. They could just be malnourished, right? So, you know, environment completely swamps their genetic advantage for height.
00:37:59.660And obviously we could be in that circumstance with respect to the differences between black and white IQ scores in the U.S. or any other invidious group difference we seem to have found through psychometrics.
00:38:15.640That's totally true. And I, I really think Charles Murray would admit that if put that way. But in terms of it being a different intuition scientifically about, you know, how, what the default should be, it seems to me a fairly minor point.
00:38:31.520And it's a point, and it's a point, most importantly, it's a point about which totally well-intentioned people can disagree, right? And, you know, often Murray just leaves it as he's agnostic, right? And it just seems a safer assumption that genes are, are involved. And again, you're, you're right. He's assuming the valence there, that the genes are making the contribution in that, in the direction of a disadvantage.
00:38:55.360So I think, I mean, I, this is probably, I think where we, maybe where the, the, you know, kernel of our queer disagreement lies, which is that Murray is saying I'm agnostic and is sort of saying I'm agnostic about a range of possibilities, which often when he talks doesn't include the possibility that there is a genetic advantage, quote unquote, to people of African ancestry.
00:39:23.040I'm saying, you know, there's just really no good science about this. And so I think where the more major disagreement is, is what are then, what is the, the risk to benefit ratio of spending time, you know, pontificating about that possibility in the absence of any real scientific data.
00:39:49.740So I think, you know, I think if you, if you have one set of values, I think it's, well, we should just be able to talk openly and honestly about, you know, any possibility that exists. And this is one possibility of the world. And we don't have any good data to suggest that it's true, but let's speculate.
00:40:09.220And, and it's really kind of, and it's really kind of our ability to talk about any possibility that might exist in the world is kind of prioritized.
00:40:19.220I think where other people might also have, not a different value, but weight, a different value is what are the harms potentially done by that speculation.
00:40:33.260And I think for a lot of people, they think about, well, that is a speculation that, you know, if, even if it doesn't necessarily feed into, is it at least consistent with some really ugly racist views about the inferiority of, of black people in particular.
00:40:52.600And so I think, you know, I think some people push back on this, well, why should we talk about something about which we are scientifically agnostic that just so happens to reinforce a really ugly stereotype.
00:41:04.600I think for me personally, I'm, I am frustrated by the amount of attention that this topic eats up when we have so much good genetic data and so many exciting methodological developments that are on much better scientific ground, that we could be talking about how do we use those to improve people's lives.
00:41:31.660But instead, you know, everyone gets kind of like speculating about racial differences when we don't really have ready data or methods to solve that problem.
00:41:44.600And so I just think there's a real, I think there's a real opportunity cost, given how, you know, in your own words, fraught and explosive this topic is, to paying so much attention to something that we can't and haven't solved well with data, at the expense of talking about all the things we could, you know, solve with data that we do have good scientific information on.
00:42:10.500So I think, you know, my risk-benefit calculus on what good versus what harm is done by letting people, you know, speculate wildly in the absence of scientific data on the sources of black-white IQ differences, I think I really, I think I come down on a different risk-benefit calculus than you do about that.
00:42:37.520Okay, well, so there's a lot contained in the phrase, letting people speculate.
00:42:49.660You and I totally agree about the opportunity costs here, but I view them as coming from a different quarter because I have no interest in IQ and I have, I really have no interest in IQ differences among groups, right?
00:43:03.240So it's not for an intrinsic interest in this topic that I have suffered massive opportunity costs in getting sucked into this black hole, right?
00:43:14.500What I am concerned about is the quality of our public conversation about everything and the defenestrations of good people for bad reasons and the voxification of science and journalism that leads to witch hunts and blasphemy tests and scapegoating and all the rest.
00:43:36.200And what I think I'm seeing here is a failure to distinguish scientific disagreement from the pressures of politics and social activism.
00:43:49.720And I'm seeing most people, even most journalists and scientists, pin their hopes for political equality and social cohesion and good outcomes, the hope for a good society, on our ability to either avoid certain topics until the end of the world or pretend that certain plausible assumptions are in fact not plausible but rather just so outrageously unlikely.
00:44:19.720And socially damaging that a person could only entertain them based on a desire to live in a society that isn't good, right, that is racist.
00:44:30.420So the assumption that people come away with, you know, whether you consciously felt this about me and Murray or not, I would be happy to know, but the moralizing topspin of the article you and your co-authors wrote,
00:44:46.180and certainly the effect in the world is that it suggests that only someone who's committed to maintaining social inequality, right, only someone who is selfishly committed to maintaining the unfair advantages of their group based on racism.
00:45:03.380Again, this is something that the onus is on white people here.
00:45:06.020Strangely, it's not on Asians, right, who compare favorably to everybody on this particular metric.
00:45:11.920Only someone who's just morally deranged by our modern lights could be tempted to take what Charles Murray says about race and IQ seriously,
00:45:23.180or could have a default hypothesis that suggests that, well, we don't know what genes are doing here, but they're probably playing a role,
00:45:29.920and they're probably playing a role in the observed direction of disparity.
00:45:34.820And I think that's, one, deeply unfair, but worse, I think it's dishonest with respect to the actual nature of the scientific differences.
00:45:45.800I think it will be bowled over by coming developments in genetics and in other sciences.
00:46:01.940I think we will, this is my default hypothesis that applies to everything across the board, not just intelligence.
00:46:09.540If you could list the top hundred things that we care about in human beings, you know, intelligence would be one.
00:46:17.220I don't know where it would be on the list, but somewhere in the top half, certainly.
00:46:21.760But list everything we care about, you know, the big five personality traits and susceptibility to violence and shyness and compassion and everything.
00:46:32.880I think virtually all of these things on the list will be dictated to some significant degree by genetics, in the case of individuals,
00:46:43.960and to some significant degree by environment.
00:46:46.760But the thing that will pose a political concern for people is that if we had ways of testing, ways of measuring all of these traits, and in many cases we do,
00:46:57.680and we decided to exhaustively test differences between groups, we would find differences.
00:47:04.020It would be an absolute miracle if the mean value for the hundred things we most cared about were the same for every conceivable group of human beings.
00:47:14.180And again, it wouldn't even matter how you pick these groups.
00:47:17.540These groups could be self-identified.
00:47:20.020They could be Yankee fans versus Red Sox fans.