Sam Harris and the Myth of Perfectly Rational Thought

[Major Nikon]

27. You aren't really identifying points of contradiction, at least ones debatable

Yes, Klein said he didn't write the article, but he also said he stands by his decision to publish the article and he considers it a good piece. Not exactly distancing himself, just acknowledging the obvious - he didn't write it.

Here is what Klein says from the transcript:

I’m here because I want to persuade you. One of the tricky things here is that I was not that involved in the original Vox article, I was editor-in-chief at the time, but I didn’t assign or edit it. I stand by it — things you publish when you’re editor-in-chief ultimately are on you — and I actually think it’s a good piece. But there are times when I can only speak from my perspective, not from the perspective of other people who wrote other things.

It's worth pointing out the beef Harris had was with what he perceived as bad faith on behalf of some at Vox and right away Klein states he's only going to speak from his own perspective and not theirs. So the point here is we aren't really going to get into the heart of the matter and I don't believe the "debate" ever actually debates the points of contradiction Harris identifies with the stuff Vox published.

But, here is what Klein pointed to - as noted by Klein, this was added to the transcript, it was not in the podcast - as the exact quote from the original article as far as he was able to tell:

The original articles they are referring to weren't podcasts, they were published articles and both of them are referencing the original published version, which was later altered. I can guess the reason why they were altered was because Harris immediately called bullshit and Vox saw the need to edit, but they don't really go into the reasons why it was changed.

I did not find any place in the transcript where Harris claims that something from the original article was retracted and apologized for. He did claim Turkheimer apologized, but nothing about a retraction, and Klein did not agree about the apology. From the transcript:

What they are talking about was Turkheimer used inflammatory language towards Harris and apologized for it. One thing they don't go into is there were a lot of folks on Vox, besides Turkheimer who accused Harris of a lot of things using inflammatory language. All this really does is prove Harris' point which is some topics are deemed toxic by some and it's impossible to have a good faith discussion about them. The reason I think Turkheimer apologized is because he realized he was a part of this and as someone who has to uphold a reputation of objectivity he knew he couldn't go there and be taken seriously. That's my take on it.

I'm not sure exactly what you're talking about here. Could you give a specific example?

You're asking me to give an example of something that wasn't there, which is pretty much my point. They didn't go into the data at all which was the central point of the original Vox articles. So I found myself asking why not and the reason almost certainly was Klein was not going to go there because he was ill equipped to do so. As an editor vs someone who has a PhD in neuroscience he would have been woefully outmatched.

No, they did not agree with each other on pretty much all pertinent points. They disagreed with each other on pretty much all the pertinent points. Here's Murray near the beginning of the discussion:

The singular example you are giving here is a contradiction about how Harris feels. For one thing, that's a totally subjective conclusion which is virtually impossible to debate objectively. For another, I'm pretty sure Harris is a better judge of how Harris feels than Klein is in judging how Harris feels.

It's a long podcast and I can only excerpt so much. But this is an example of pertinent points they disagreed on.

I agree there's too much to go into and pretty much all of it falls outside the scope of this group. However, what I got out of it was Klein is basically faulting Harris for not presenting the arguments he would have presented to Murray and by not doing so he demonstrated a lack of empathy for those who are on the shit end of the stick. Regardless of which side you want to go with it's still something that's highly subjective and it's a pretty hard case to make that Klein knows more about how Harris feels than he does.