A Conversation With Charles Murray

In this episode of the Waking Up podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Charles Murray about the controversy over his book The Bell Curve, the validity and significance of IQ as a measure of intelligence, the problem of social stratification, the rise of Trump, universal basic income, and other topics...

I’m about halfway through the podcast, it’s long but quite good. Murray is great as usual, Sam Harris comes off as confused (if well meaning and respectful) idiot, who finds it so painful and difficult to deal with the fact that on average races are different that he questions why those differences should be studied at all.

He’s of the school that ignorance is bliss, and that national policies should be made on the basis of wishful thinking.

Somehow he thinks that burying our head in the sand will make them disappear from the consciousness of average people, when in fact your average joe is much more aware and realistic about those differences than any guilt ridden, politically correct, and intellectually castrated academic will ever be.

The average person knows full well of the differences by simply looking around, he doesn’t need to read a 500 book page to tell him the obvious.

That’s not to say that those differences are not a problem - they are a huge problem - probably the biggest problem we face. It consumes a tremendous amount of resources and attention. But everything we’re doing about it is wrong, as Murray correctly points out.

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