A Deep Dive into the Harris-Klein Controversy

Some weeks ago I stumbled upon a link to a collection of emails between Sam Harris and Ezra Klein. The two argued about an article that Klein’s site Vox had published in response to Harris’s podcast with controversial political scientist Charles Murray. While starting relatively well, it got worse. Whatever good will was there in the beginning had run out by the end, spent on failed attempts to get on the same page.

This sort of thing happens a lot, of course, but this was special: two intelligent, rational authors baffled about each other’s behavior in a disastrous misunderstanding regarding a complex, controversial issue. Thousands of words result, just counting that email exchange.

How disagreement works is my main theme on this blog, so of course this shit is catnip to me. I just had to look into it. I did and I’ve been obsessing about it ever since. Hence this 9,000 word article, cut down from twice as much material[1].

I came away from the email conversation with the impression that Harris got unhinged and retracted his invitation to have Klein come on his podcast for no good reason[2]. And he had released this exchange himself, obviously thinking people would take his side and it’d reflect badly on Klein. That’s not what happened. Many thought Harris came off as the unreasonable party (and I can certainly see that). It’s quite remarkable how he could be so convinced that publishing the exchange would be primarily embarrasing for Klein. His anger also seemed out of character; I’ve listened to a few of his podcasts and he comes off as well-reasoned, balanced and rational. Nonetheless he appears to be the one responsible for the conversation deteriorating somewhere in the middle. Why this reaction from him? To find out one has to trace the conversation backwards.

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