Ezra seemed to be arguing both at the social-shaming level (implying things like “you are doing something normatively wrong by giving Murray airtime”) and at the epistemic level (saying “your science is probably factually wrong because of these biases”). The mixture of those levels muddles the argument.
In particular, it signaled to me that the epistemic-level argument was weak—if Ezra would have been able to get away with arguing exclusively from the epistemic level, he would have (because, in my view, such arguments are more convincing), so choosing not to do so suggests weakness on that front.
(Why do I think this? I came away from the debate podcast frustrated with Ezra. Sam was being insistent about arguing exclusively on the epistemic level. Ezra was having none of it. After thinking about it for a long time, I came to the summary I wrote above, which I felt was more favorable / more of a steelman to Ezra than my initial impression from the debate.)
So, at least to convince me, if Ezra wanted to make the points you are suggesting he make, then he should have stuck to debating Sam on epistemic grounds and avoiding all normative implications.
Ezra seemed to be arguing both at the social-shaming level (implying things like “you are doing something normatively wrong by giving Murray airtime”) and at the epistemic level (saying “your science is probably factually wrong because of these biases”). The mixture of those levels muddles the argument.
In particular, it signaled to me that the epistemic-level argument was weak—if Ezra would have been able to get away with arguing exclusively from the epistemic level, he would have (because, in my view, such arguments are more convincing), so choosing not to do so suggests weakness on that front.
(Why do I think this? I came away from the debate podcast frustrated with Ezra. Sam was being insistent about arguing exclusively on the epistemic level. Ezra was having none of it. After thinking about it for a long time, I came to the summary I wrote above, which I felt was more favorable / more of a steelman to Ezra than my initial impression from the debate.)
So, at least to convince me, if Ezra wanted to make the points you are suggesting he make, then he should have stuck to debating Sam on epistemic grounds and avoiding all normative implications.