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quadrungle wrote

Well, that clip in the video you sent is Sam introducing the topic of what's up with Murray etc. in telling the listener about the podcast they are about to listen to. And he doesn't say in that quote that "average black's IQ is less than a white's IQ".

What he says in that quote is that IQ does indicate something about intelligence and that average IQ varies across races. He didn't even say which way it varies, just that it varies. You seem to have put words in his mouth that weren't quite there.

I guess I'm being charitable in my interpretation. I hear Sam saying that things like intelligence are inherently going to vary at least slightly across populations but failing to emphasize all the reasons to doubt our understanding of that variance.

I mean, it seems almost guaranteed that we'll find some statistical variance for most measures across different populations. The question is whether and why and how to think about it. Maybe it's artifacts of our measurement systems, a la the Streetlight Effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetlight_effect

But seriously, Sam is obviously interested in the philosophical and political questions around how to treat someone like Murray and how to navigate the conversation and tensions between him and his detractors etc. and there's no evidence at all that Sam is himself interested at all in race science in itself.

Obviously, if Sam is going about trying to understand the protests against Murray and hear Murray's perspective, then Sam is making efforts to articulate what Murray is saying. But I don't think you'll find any compelling history of Sam himself being interested in race science otherwise.

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