In regards to the highlighted point, it does not seem evident to me that ideological far-leftists are any more open to discussing ideas than conservatives. To me it seems that generally whoever perceives they are in power in culture wars at any given time is interested in controlling speech to maintain the status quo. And whoever is not in power is interested in discussing ideas.

Bernie Sanders grew up in a time when he was the outsider looking in, and may be an exception in his willingness to discuss ideas even outside of this. Outside of this one example, it certainly does not seem obvious to me that the leftists in power today are any more interested in free expression of ideas than the conservatives who controlled the narrative in the 1950s.

And going outside the US, history certainly does not support an argument that leftist regimes/societies have shown any interest in open discourse.

You'll notice I actually claimed that the left were more interested in engaging on ideas than the center, not than conservatives. As for your point here - the left, and particularly the far left, doesn't perceive themselves as being in power in culture wars right now.

Two points. First, I don't equate an emphasis on open discourse with an engagement in new or interesting ideas. The IDW want to lower the social cost of promoting (some) ideas. Fine, I agree with that. That doesn't mean that the ideas they are themselves interested in promoting are very interesting or new. I would say that thinkers on the left have been at least as creative and interesting in thinking about the nature of society and politics over the last few decades as the more centrist and conservative people the IDW want to protect from social stigma.

Second, a lot of this depends on what you mean by "the left." If your stereotypical image of the left is a college student trying to deplatform some conservative speaker, fine I can see how you get this image. My view of the left is more traditional, i.e. people in the DSA, or people like microbet and Shame Trolly. That is, actual socialists, not just identity-focused progressives, who often seem to me pretty conservative in their social views.

Depends, just as it does for rightwing regimes, on which ones you are talking about. I'll definitely agree that many leftwing governments, especially communist and affiliated ones, were quite illiberal in how they viewed speech rights.

So just to be clear you are precisely and exactly signing on to Harris' position, which I've represented quite accurately, which is you believe black people are dumber than white people because of genetics.

Your oh-so-clever get out of jail card to getting called racist for believing that is also the same as Harris, which is you don't think there's anything wrong with being dumb, but uh, lol. Nobody buys that.


I quoted Sam Harris verbatim, and you haven't actually explained what, if anything, I'm wrong about. You just cry that I'm mean and mischaracterizing people but won't actually explain their actual views(or, for that matter, your actual views).

This is because the IDW culture breeds very bad habits, they don't ever actually disagree with each other so someone sincerely saying "no that's wrong and here's why" is something you're completely unprepared for.

What did I make up? And please figure out how the quote tags work. You're really putting the lie to the superior intellect bit.

OK and you're finally around to where the discussion started, with white supremacists at least being able to self-evaluate their foes and their allies and their policy views and then sorting themselves accurately while the IDW thinks affirmative action and BLM and immigration policies more expansive than closed borders are "the radical left" but can't connect the dots on where on the spectrum that puts them.

(Also a Klansman absolutely wouldn't say he's in favor of affirmative action for whites, duh, they think that without affirmative action white people would naturally dominate academic enrollment. They don't think whites need government help, they think the government holds white people back. Stop guessing at what you imagine people might believe, or at least think about it for more than 30 seconds.)

Ok, so your insight is that the IDW and a clansman are both to the right of the radical left. Cool.

Fine, then an obvious policy difference would be that a clansman is pro slavery and the IDW is not.

Klansman. With a K. The KKK.

The return of chattel slavery is not a hot ticket issue of much controversy today and again I think you'd find most KKK people would not actually advocate for it. Their defenses of the Confederacy, for example, tend to downplay the role of slavery in secession, they like to quote statistics about how few people actually owned slaves, etc. etc.

And the IDW is to obviously to the right of the "radical left", but they also think the "radical left" includes mainstream Democratic policies and anodyne political correctness about Muslims and transgender people and race science and all the rest of their various resentments and trigger issues. Clearly IDW members are not actually in the KKK, they aren't literally the same people, but their core beliefs about racial and gender hierarchies put them solidly on the right. (to the extent they hold actual policy beliefs, of course, several members like Rubin, Rogan, and Weinstein are such airheads they are difficult to place on a spectrum)

And the point people are making is that if black people are innately stupider than white people and Muslims are an existential threat to Western Civilization and the Cultural Marxists are trying to indoctrinate children with the gay agenda and all the other things IDW people seem to think are undeniably true(but suppressed by the regressive left)...

Well, for one every position you have assigned me is completely made up. In the paragraph in question, you stated IDW don't get into the weeds in policy. Actually, most of them do on most policies. Another made up argument. That is just off the top of my head.

Also, I am not making any claim to superior intellect. You must have me confused with "you guys" again. I seriously doubt I am smarter or more intelligent than you at all (whatever that even means). So since in your world this is what makes someone superior, I guess you are superior to me. So congrats on your superiority.

Also, I am going to stop replying to Fly now. I could do this all day. But I think everyone gets the point, and the forum doesn't need anymore of this. If he ever shows an interest in having honest conversations than that is fine, but as long as it is just fly bys deriding and mischaracterizing, I'll just ignore it.

Seems like it wasn't that the leftist bubble of the prior forum didn't need to be protected from you at all, three replies in and you're done. You could just, you know, say what you think about race and IQ if you disagree with Harris, say what you think Harris' view is if you think I'm mischaracterizing him, say what policy stuff the IDW gets into the weeds about if you think I'm making that up... but just like Shapiro and Neil or Peterson and Zizek, exposure to people who disagree with you is a very emotionally damaging event.

I’m not so sure. Like, sure they love to downplay the role of slavery in the South, but I think they know full well they’re bull****ting. My gut feeling is that a strong majority of Neo-Confederates and Klansmen would vote in favor of reintroducing slavery.

Ok. I guess I lied.

You first. What are your thoughts on race and IQ?

Fly kind of reminds me of the white guy who sings rap songs outloud in his car, and when the N word comes up he really leans into it. But it is ok, because he is just repeating someone else's lyrics.

Fly seems to have a real unhealthy fixation on race and IQ. But it is ok, because he is only doing it to show how racist other people are.

All those hours spent listening to Jordan Peterson and this is the end product?

Respectfully, if you haven't actually listened to what Fly is saying, I would suggest you take the time to actually listen to him before forming an opinion, as I find pretty much everything that comes out of the 2+2 ****posting on this topic is just ad hominem attacks and straw men arguments.

Ok. I asked him to give his thoughts on his apparent favorite subject. When he does, we can dig into them and really get to understand his position and what he is saying, and maybe we will all be better off for the experience.

It has been an hour since his last post. He really must be writing a long post with well articulated, thought out arguments. I am actually very interested and excited to see what the finished product is.

If this thread continues the way it seems to be going lately, I'm just going to lock it.

In case anyone's curious this is the podcast that Fly thinks makes Harris and anyone who listens to him racist. You only need to listen to the intro to realise he's talking out of his ass.

Harris had Murray on after he realised Murray had been the target of a witch hunt which had convinced Harris Murray was a foaming at the mouth racist for 20 years. He only read Murray's book after Murray got chased out out of a college he was brought in to speak at because he wanted to see how much fire was beneath the smoke, not because he was interested in IQ, or IQ differences between races. Harris has since said that IQ differences between races is one of the things society isn't well enough equipped to deal with and it's best not to discuss it.

Race is a social construct and IQ tests, as administered, are a terrible measure of intelligence, which is in itself a nebulous concept.

Sounds like Harris agrees with those “witch hunting” students?

So like literally exactly what I said? Right down to the same thing Kelhus pulled with the refusal to talk about it dodge, because obviously all of you do believe in 19th century Cecil Rhodes-style race science but don't want to admit it. I know, I know, that's mischaracterizing... but you could always just say you don't believe it, if you actually don't.

Do you just have no idea who Charles Murray is or what his book is about?


(and, again with the point 6ix made, at least Murray follows through on his white supremacist convictions and calls for policy to be shaped with the inferiority of black people in mind. you guys agree with him on the race science, think SJWs are censoring the truth about race science, but... what? What's the big picture argument about race, then?)

I honestly don't know what actual conversation these people want to have about race. Harris wants to whine about SJWs and forbidden knowledge because that's clickbait for his audience of white NEETs, but if he got his way, what, Charles Murray would give speeches to respectful silence or empty auditoriums and nobody would agree or disagree?

Where are we going with all of this?

Sam Harris has spent his entire career as a professional troll and uhhh isn’t the whole point of the IDW gang that they talk about difficult subjects? It’s sort of rich that he wants to pump the brakes here. He must figure that he can get away with demonizing Muslims but going full Bell Curve race science truther would be a bridge too far and the chattering classes might stop taking him seriously.

I saw your answer to my question, so thank you for answering, and I have no problem with it.

Anyways, I listened to the first half of the podcast Harris did with Ezra Klein on my way to work this morning. Anyways, it seems to me that what Harris wants (at least at the time he did the podcast, maybe his feelings have changed since) is for academic research to have this sacred space where it can be evaluated on whether it is true or not, without consideration for the motivations of the person doing the research, the political ramifications, or how the data may be weaponized in the real world.

It seems like he wants for Murray to be able to give a talk about The Bell Curve, and then have a civil debate centered around how "true" the data is, not on how big of a racist Murray is for writing the book, or how big of a racist he is for having Murray on his podcast.

It seems he wants for someone to be able to read the Bell Curve with no preconceived notions, and look at the data and decide for themselves whether blacks in the US on average have lower IQ centered around a normal distribution (I admit I have never looked at any data on race IQ or read the Bell Curve, so I am just inferring what it says), and if they decide the data is sound this doesn't and shouldn't make them a racist.

This is getting off track a little, and I know I am probably being sloppy with my words, but it seems to me Harris's whole worldview seems to revolve around there being such a thing as "rational truth" we should all be striving to reach, in order to transcend our base human instincts, and in doing so we can have true moral clarity and reach utopia. And in such a world he could have Murray on his podcast, or read The Bell Curve, and maybe even agree with some of the data, without it being a moral transgression.

This is opposed to more "progressive" ideals of relativism that everything is contextual, and there is no absolute truth. And in this worldview, given the context of historical racial inequality and systemic bias, not to mention Murray's own history as a policy entrepeneur, even the act of reading the Bell Curve with an "open" mind or having a civil conversation with Charles Murray is an act of sin.

That was a bit rambly and might not have gone where intended, but I really am trying to make sense of how seemingly the same event can be perceived so radically differently depending on where you are coming from.

What if I told you that experts have actually done this and concluded that Murray is a crank? There’s a reason he works for conservative think-tanks and not in academia.

Are you sure about that? Here is a self proclaimed expert in intelligence research who disagrees with your claim, at least as it narrowly pertains to the Harris-Murray podcast.

Is this scientist a fraud? Is he lying?

What is going on here if everything is so clear?