LawTalkers  

Go Back   LawTalkers

» Site Navigation
 > FAQ
» Online Users: 391
0 members and 391 guests
No Members online
Most users ever online was 4,499, 10-26-2015 at 07:55 AM.
View Single Post
Old 08-01-2018, 04:23 PM   #2015
Adder
I am beyond a rank!
 
Adder's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2003
Posts: 17,113
Re: We are all Slave now.

Quote:
Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield View Post
Ezra Klein

I think there is what you would call confusion here. I do think it’s just important to say this. I have not criticized you, and I continue to not, for having the conversation. I’ve criticized you for having the conversation without dealing with and separating it out and thinking through the context and the weight of American history on it.
More concisely, address the issue the way I believe you should address the issue. If there's nothing to be censored from the conversation, or avoided, then there's no need for Klein to tell Harris how he should approach Murray. It's only because Klein believes certain elements of Murray's theories need to be avoided (are deviant) that he believes Harris should "think through the context." This "thinking through the context" is a sly way of saying, "be more careful," particularly when you listen to the podcast rather than read it. Klein has no business telling Harris to be careful or not careful.
Klein again:

"I think that there is room to have conversations about genetic findings, but because we are mapping those conversations onto social-political realities, having more conversations where you deliver more nuance and more understanding, where you yourself get more understanding of the social-political realities — I feel uncomfortable being the person on the other side of the chair here. I don’t think — I’m not an expert on race and IQ — but I’m also not someone who I think is the right spokesperson for the experience of other races in this country. And I don’t think that is me falling into a trap of identity politics. I think that is me being honest about what are the limits of my own perception. There’s a lot I can learn, but, you know, I’m a political journalist and I’ve only learned so much.

I continue to think that the way you handled the conversation with Murray, framing it as a question of political correctness, did too much to ignore what this conversation has meant to people, for whom the dangers is not that Charles Murray will be — and I think this was bad — be de-platformed and even have his chaperone assaulted at Middlebury, or what has been more normal in his career, be extremely successful but widely criticized. I think that a conversation with a broader range of experts would give you more texture and more empathy for the people whom this conversation and its imprecision and the way it gets leveraged in American life really hurts them."
Once more, Klein is telling Harris that Harris needs to drop a straight-up empirical approach to the subject and consider a broader context. He's telling Harris to consider the social political realities (his words) as he assesses a scientific theory.

I don't know how you don't see the censorship. (Except to be obtuse and say Klein doesn't come out and forbid Harris from taking a purely empirical approach, which he obviously cannot.) When you tell a person they should follow your preferred limits on how a debate may proceed, you have put borders on that debate. Those borders requires that certain things not be said, or that certain things be said differently. This is request for the prohibition of certain expressions and ideas. Is it Orwellian? No. Is it violent and compulsory? Of course not. But it's an attempt to pre-empt the blunt scientific discussion of controversial theories and replace them with a softer discussion including non-scientific considerations.

It's massaging the conversation to a murky place where there's no straightforward assessment of Murray's "work." It's a really pernicious attempt at subtle censorship, and it only serves to prolong Murrayism.
This is perhaps the least interesting conversation we've ever had, but "deliver more nuance and more understanding" sounds like urging him to say more, not less.
Adder is offline  
 
Powered by vBadvanced CMPS v3.0.1

All times are GMT -4. The time now is 01:01 AM.