It makes me sad that I couldn't read the book Lying, which has an interesting premise, without knowing that this guy is so spun out by "orange man" that he can say he doesn't "care" about truth.
> shrieks at me that I'm a Trumper whenever I point out some lie being told about him
Gods, but that has been such a frustrating development over the last seven years.
"Look, you stupid fucks, it's actually quite simple. If he's **really** that bad, you won't **have** to lie about him in order to take him down. And if he can't be taken down without lying, maybe he just isn't actually as bad as he's made out to be."
It truly is a derangement.
*15 minutes pass as I ponder things*
I'm laughing now, because I've realized your first statement applies even to me. I didn't vote for him either time (functionally choosing "none of the above" by voting for third party candidates) but... yeah. In the end, much like you seem to have, I was rendered down and exposed as someone who prefers "truth" over "popularity" as my "true self", I suppose.
I'm sure that I could not actually count the number of times (because it happened so often) that someone would repeat some lie they'd heard from the media about him, and then, even when shown video evidence that their assertion was false, would just move on to the next subject. And then do it all over again the following week with the **next** set of falsehoods.
It's certainly not like I enjoyed having to defend Trump, and the last era has cost me a **lot** of people I considered friends, before. But I'd rather defend the truth, because some day I might need it to defend me.
Yes I've seen this happen a couple of times in my life now. A great figure whom I respect espouses an argument for X as a principle, sometimes their whole research program is based on it. Then later they make an argument about a specific thing that is the result of believing not-X.
I just shrug my shoulders and chalk it up to being human. If we were perfectly logical beings how boring would that be? :)
If he ever pulls his head out of his ass, once all you hearies get your hearing back from the deafeningly loud pop, the book that comes from it could be life-changing.
Sam taught me to never put my faith in public figures. It really felt like a betrayal at the time. I can only imagine what kind of corpses are piling up in his basement. There are few lies greater than, "I know lying is wrong, so much so I wrote a whole book about it, but now, now the ends justify the means, clearly."
Good luck in your quest for truth. A lifetime of lies leaves a knotted net of dead wood, and its not so easy as it sounds, burning it all away. "One word of truth outweighs the world" - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
I just my first major disagreement with my brother and his wife about their parenting that I felt the need to vocalize. They took their daughters to some zoo or something. It was free for 5 year olds and fifty dollars for six year olds, she is almost seven. My sister in law asked her to say she was five and my niece got so angry and indignant and refused to say it. I was and still am astonished that my sister in law would compromise her daughters innocence for fifty dollars. They tell the girl not to lie, then deman she lies, bring her into the realm of adult culpability, and in doing so, deny her the hierarchy of achievement that they claim to celebrate that comes along with moving from preschool to school, turning six, and seven in a months time, maturing and growing. They taught her in that moment that those achievements mean nothing.
Holy shit. That's serious. And if they don't do a MAJOR mea culpa, they've lost all credibility on expecting her to be honest, as well as damaged her ability to trust them. WOW.
Thank you for saying that. I've felt very much alone in this as the disagreement with her led to a real big row with my closest brother, and even my mother defended it- which was rather illuminating in itself considering my own history with lying.
I pray my nieces indignation, relentless refutation and pleas of, "but I'm six! No I'm six!" leave in my sister in law a scorching educational scar. I love them to death, I would die this instant for that family. However, Holly is right, it is very serious. Our relationship is at a crossroad. I wont hold our relationship hostage, and demand they make it right. They know where I stand and hopefully they do what is right or adjust their behavior moving forward. Nevertheless, I cannot and will not be apart of compromising the innocence of their children. This is strike one; I don't think I have the good graces of three strikes in me.
I get where you're coming from, but that is pretty arbitrary and stupid of the zoo. Kindergarten- totally free. 1st grade- arm and a leg. If I worked at the info counter everyone would be 5 years old.
Sam Harris has shown himself to be a fraud, that’s not a surprise to me, but his trivializing trafficked children…may he be shunned by decent people and never interviewed again.
She's 13 or 14 now. I have no idea how people with actual parents react to things, but I can imagine that if I thought my father loved me, hearing him say he wouldn't care if there were the corpses of children in the basement, it wouldn't have changed his vote, would hurt.
He might be a really good dad. A lot of limousine liberal types are really great with their kids. Good schools and housing. They were all for lockdowns and masks everywhere because it made them comfortable, but their families were not effected that much. They're the type to say, "Lockdowns weren't that bad, my kids are doing 3 APs and sports. If my kids are fine, then it must be poor parenting where kids are 2 years behind. As long as my kids get into Brown or Swarthmore or whatever, all is right in the world. Plus my IRA or investments are still solid, and I can work from home forever" Some people are very comfortable with. "I'm smart and successful, so it must be something I did. So, whatever I do to maintain that is good"
I never heard of SH until today, but 1 sentence from his mouth and your description and I know this guy.
Superb, Holly. As good a discussion of ethics as you’d hear from a brilliant apologist like CS Lewis, or brilliant polemicist like Christopher Hitchens.
Why is one party is so unconcerned with ethics in general and yet so vested in the ethics of this one person?
It's all I know. I'm trying to make peace with the idea that who I would've been if some nurse had made a mistake when I was born and sent me home with sane people is both an unanswerable question and an inappropriate goal.
For awhile, before Trump's run for the 2016 presidency, I listened to Sam Harris and thought he had a pretty good grip on things. Then, after Trump entered the picture, he went off the rails. I lost all respect for him because it was clear to me that he wasn't basing his judgement about Trump on anything other than emotional over reaction high in vitriol and void of fact.
Agreed. His smugness and high moral dudgeon were insufferable, and moreso the longer he doubled down. Now he has turned into something he literally once wrote a whole goddamn book arguing that nobody should be. Amazing.
Aug 18, 2022·edited Aug 18, 2022Liked by Holly MathNerd
There is momentum in this country toward suspending democracy and due process of law (ostensibly)* in order to save them. (See tweets from General Hayden et al for further details.)
Sam Harris has added his considerable influence to this momentum.
Yes, he has. Thank you for this comment. I see it too, which is why I used the domestic violence and cop examples of why it's ok to do things just this once. It's not, actually.
I keep phrasing it as "They've pulled the pin, and their grip on the spoon is slipping, and once it goes, saying oops and putting the pin back in won't keep that grenade from going boom."
Nobody, **anywhere** is going to enjoy how badly that turns out.
A civil war in the country with the most firearms on the planet will be a bloodbath to significantly reduce the population of the planet.
Of course, some say that's exactly the goal, so...
So disheartening to see this in people who seem to have no self awareness, are so lacking in discernment, and yet believe they have the wisdom to expound about matters of conscience and moral foundation.
Trump broke Harris. Covid broke him even further. The way he spoke about and treated Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying during the pandemic proved to me he is not a person anyone should listen to.
I remember another time when an authority figure openly lied and defended it: Obama was trying to sell the ACA, and admitted that they were making false statements about it because they KNEW that it was the best thing if people accepted it. They called it "nudges" because people don't really like liars. Those who currently despise Democrat politicians have long memories of things like this.
But have you ever read Robert Trivers' "Folly of Fools?" More of an evo-psych and less of a psychoanalytical POV.
I just saw the clip you're referencing. I thought maybe SH was making some dark joke about "children's corpses". He was completely serious. "We're a nation of adult children of alcoholics. We don't get mad at the people who are inflicting the pain in this country. We get mad at the people who are pointing it out." Everything they accuse Trump of, has been done for the last 50 years by Rs and Ds. But, when Trump does it, journalists cover it, and we can't pretend it's not happening.
On a personal note. Everyone who lives long enough becomes the person they hate. Chomsky. Yes, Noam Chomsky was a lockdown/mandate aficionado at Newsom/Trudeau levels.It's disappointing, but it happens
Excellent, concise, definitive dismemberment of the once-awesome Sam Harris. Thank you. I agree with a previous commenter: there’s a hint of the late great Hitchens in your writing and analysis. So glad to have found you hear after I (and you) thankfully quit twitter.
I will share a John Irving story in the comments. I actually had a few books signed by him at the National Mall in DC. It was amazing to see and it was quite endearing. He seemed very chill and very honorable. Only one day, I actually wrote a book, and I said, "hey, I'm going to use a phrase from Until I find you" for my first book, The Disintegrating Bloodline." He was so chill that he let me use it will full permission, and didn't even have to pay for it. When I asked if he would love to read it, then that became a different story. But it's okay. Business is business, I guess, and using the quote for free worked out well.
Also, I do agree with what you're saying. I think Noam Chomsky was the same for me. To see him say, "separate the unvaccinated" made me cringe to the most unfathomable moment of tears. And then he says, "The person who lead us out of Ukraine is Donald Trump." It's like "what?" I don't think I have an eloquent tone such as you, but you're right to feel this way. And it was just as awful to watch, too, but I was never a fan of his, so I really don't have any stake concerning Sam Harris's future.
You are probably right, and that makes me sad. I want to believe in a world where a book like his can be taken seriously.
This legend sounds fascinating. I'm going to look it up. Thank you.
It makes me sad that I couldn't read the book Lying, which has an interesting premise, without knowing that this guy is so spun out by "orange man" that he can say he doesn't "care" about truth.
Trump would love that description. You could totally see it in a campaign event.
> shrieks at me that I'm a Trumper whenever I point out some lie being told about him
Gods, but that has been such a frustrating development over the last seven years.
"Look, you stupid fucks, it's actually quite simple. If he's **really** that bad, you won't **have** to lie about him in order to take him down. And if he can't be taken down without lying, maybe he just isn't actually as bad as he's made out to be."
It truly is a derangement.
*15 minutes pass as I ponder things*
I'm laughing now, because I've realized your first statement applies even to me. I didn't vote for him either time (functionally choosing "none of the above" by voting for third party candidates) but... yeah. In the end, much like you seem to have, I was rendered down and exposed as someone who prefers "truth" over "popularity" as my "true self", I suppose.
I'm sure that I could not actually count the number of times (because it happened so often) that someone would repeat some lie they'd heard from the media about him, and then, even when shown video evidence that their assertion was false, would just move on to the next subject. And then do it all over again the following week with the **next** set of falsehoods.
It's certainly not like I enjoyed having to defend Trump, and the last era has cost me a **lot** of people I considered friends, before. But I'd rather defend the truth, because some day I might need it to defend me.
Yes I've seen this happen a couple of times in my life now. A great figure whom I respect espouses an argument for X as a principle, sometimes their whole research program is based on it. Then later they make an argument about a specific thing that is the result of believing not-X.
I just shrug my shoulders and chalk it up to being human. If we were perfectly logical beings how boring would that be? :)
Well said. I, too, have been listening to Sam since before Trump. I still hold out hope that one day he will see the error of all this.
If he ever pulls his head out of his ass, once all you hearies get your hearing back from the deafeningly loud pop, the book that comes from it could be life-changing.
I think it will look more like Ace Ventura emerging from the rhinoceros.
Sam taught me to never put my faith in public figures. It really felt like a betrayal at the time. I can only imagine what kind of corpses are piling up in his basement. There are few lies greater than, "I know lying is wrong, so much so I wrote a whole book about it, but now, now the ends justify the means, clearly."
Good luck in your quest for truth. A lifetime of lies leaves a knotted net of dead wood, and its not so easy as it sounds, burning it all away. "One word of truth outweighs the world" - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Thanks. And yeah, it really is stunning how far that man has fallen.
I just my first major disagreement with my brother and his wife about their parenting that I felt the need to vocalize. They took their daughters to some zoo or something. It was free for 5 year olds and fifty dollars for six year olds, she is almost seven. My sister in law asked her to say she was five and my niece got so angry and indignant and refused to say it. I was and still am astonished that my sister in law would compromise her daughters innocence for fifty dollars. They tell the girl not to lie, then deman she lies, bring her into the realm of adult culpability, and in doing so, deny her the hierarchy of achievement that they claim to celebrate that comes along with moving from preschool to school, turning six, and seven in a months time, maturing and growing. They taught her in that moment that those achievements mean nothing.
Holy shit. That's serious. And if they don't do a MAJOR mea culpa, they've lost all credibility on expecting her to be honest, as well as damaged her ability to trust them. WOW.
Thank you for saying that. I've felt very much alone in this as the disagreement with her led to a real big row with my closest brother, and even my mother defended it- which was rather illuminating in itself considering my own history with lying.
I pray my nieces indignation, relentless refutation and pleas of, "but I'm six! No I'm six!" leave in my sister in law a scorching educational scar. I love them to death, I would die this instant for that family. However, Holly is right, it is very serious. Our relationship is at a crossroad. I wont hold our relationship hostage, and demand they make it right. They know where I stand and hopefully they do what is right or adjust their behavior moving forward. Nevertheless, I cannot and will not be apart of compromising the innocence of their children. This is strike one; I don't think I have the good graces of three strikes in me.
I get where you're coming from, but that is pretty arbitrary and stupid of the zoo. Kindergarten- totally free. 1st grade- arm and a leg. If I worked at the info counter everyone would be 5 years old.
How can anyone afford to visit that zoo?
that zoo better have animals from other planets
Sam Harris has shown himself to be a fraud, that’s not a surprise to me, but his trivializing trafficked children…may he be shunned by decent people and never interviewed again.
It would be appalling from anyone, but he has two daughters. One of them is old enough to push back. I hope she does.
I hope she is able to become self sufficient and move out of his house asap.
She's 13 or 14 now. I have no idea how people with actual parents react to things, but I can imagine that if I thought my father loved me, hearing him say he wouldn't care if there were the corpses of children in the basement, it wouldn't have changed his vote, would hurt.
Sam’s “corpses of children in the basement” should be brought up every time his name is mentioned in the media. He crossed a line.
He might be a really good dad. A lot of limousine liberal types are really great with their kids. Good schools and housing. They were all for lockdowns and masks everywhere because it made them comfortable, but their families were not effected that much. They're the type to say, "Lockdowns weren't that bad, my kids are doing 3 APs and sports. If my kids are fine, then it must be poor parenting where kids are 2 years behind. As long as my kids get into Brown or Swarthmore or whatever, all is right in the world. Plus my IRA or investments are still solid, and I can work from home forever" Some people are very comfortable with. "I'm smart and successful, so it must be something I did. So, whatever I do to maintain that is good"
I never heard of SH until today, but 1 sentence from his mouth and your description and I know this guy.
So, just right for Hunter Biden's tastes, then?
I wonder if he'd have fed his daughter to him to keep Trump out of office, or just **other** people's children.
Superb, Holly. As good a discussion of ethics as you’d hear from a brilliant apologist like CS Lewis, or brilliant polemicist like Christopher Hitchens.
Why is one party is so unconcerned with ethics in general and yet so vested in the ethics of this one person?
Undeserved praise, but thank you.
And I really don't get it at all.
You have a gift for distilling things down to their essence - super valuable!
It's all I know. I'm trying to make peace with the idea that who I would've been if some nurse had made a mistake when I was born and sent me home with sane people is both an unanswerable question and an inappropriate goal.
For awhile, before Trump's run for the 2016 presidency, I listened to Sam Harris and thought he had a pretty good grip on things. Then, after Trump entered the picture, he went off the rails. I lost all respect for him because it was clear to me that he wasn't basing his judgement about Trump on anything other than emotional over reaction high in vitriol and void of fact.
Agreed. His smugness and high moral dudgeon were insufferable, and moreso the longer he doubled down. Now he has turned into something he literally once wrote a whole goddamn book arguing that nobody should be. Amazing.
There is momentum in this country toward suspending democracy and due process of law (ostensibly)* in order to save them. (See tweets from General Hayden et al for further details.)
Sam Harris has added his considerable influence to this momentum.
*EDITED to add ‘(ostensibly)’
Yes, he has. Thank you for this comment. I see it too, which is why I used the domestic violence and cop examples of why it's ok to do things just this once. It's not, actually.
Yeah.
I keep phrasing it as "They've pulled the pin, and their grip on the spoon is slipping, and once it goes, saying oops and putting the pin back in won't keep that grenade from going boom."
Nobody, **anywhere** is going to enjoy how badly that turns out.
A civil war in the country with the most firearms on the planet will be a bloodbath to significantly reduce the population of the planet.
Of course, some say that's exactly the goal, so...
So disheartening to see this in people who seem to have no self awareness, are so lacking in discernment, and yet believe they have the wisdom to expound about matters of conscience and moral foundation.
I wonder if Jordan Peterson will speak to this issue.
Trump broke Harris. Covid broke him even further. The way he spoke about and treated Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying during the pandemic proved to me he is not a person anyone should listen to.
I remember another time when an authority figure openly lied and defended it: Obama was trying to sell the ACA, and admitted that they were making false statements about it because they KNEW that it was the best thing if people accepted it. They called it "nudges" because people don't really like liars. Those who currently despise Democrat politicians have long memories of things like this.
But have you ever read Robert Trivers' "Folly of Fools?" More of an evo-psych and less of a psychoanalytical POV.
I just saw the clip you're referencing. I thought maybe SH was making some dark joke about "children's corpses". He was completely serious. "We're a nation of adult children of alcoholics. We don't get mad at the people who are inflicting the pain in this country. We get mad at the people who are pointing it out." Everything they accuse Trump of, has been done for the last 50 years by Rs and Ds. But, when Trump does it, journalists cover it, and we can't pretend it's not happening.
On a personal note. Everyone who lives long enough becomes the person they hate. Chomsky. Yes, Noam Chomsky was a lockdown/mandate aficionado at Newsom/Trudeau levels.It's disappointing, but it happens
Regarding Chomsky, I’ve appreciated hearing Jimmy Dore point out this intellectual’s weaseling behavior. 😉
Excellent, concise, definitive dismemberment of the once-awesome Sam Harris. Thank you. I agree with a previous commenter: there’s a hint of the late great Hitchens in your writing and analysis. So glad to have found you hear after I (and you) thankfully quit twitter.
Thank you so much!
At this point all he can hope for is that he doesn't get what he's asked for.
Wow. Powerful. Thank you.
I'm writing a response article and will be using this--thank you.
I miss Hitch.
https://hollymathnerd.substack.com/p/a-response-to-sam-harris
I will share a John Irving story in the comments. I actually had a few books signed by him at the National Mall in DC. It was amazing to see and it was quite endearing. He seemed very chill and very honorable. Only one day, I actually wrote a book, and I said, "hey, I'm going to use a phrase from Until I find you" for my first book, The Disintegrating Bloodline." He was so chill that he let me use it will full permission, and didn't even have to pay for it. When I asked if he would love to read it, then that became a different story. But it's okay. Business is business, I guess, and using the quote for free worked out well.
Also, I do agree with what you're saying. I think Noam Chomsky was the same for me. To see him say, "separate the unvaccinated" made me cringe to the most unfathomable moment of tears. And then he says, "The person who lead us out of Ukraine is Donald Trump." It's like "what?" I don't think I have an eloquent tone such as you, but you're right to feel this way. And it was just as awful to watch, too, but I was never a fan of his, so I really don't have any stake concerning Sam Harris's future.
Hope you're doing well regardless, Queen
Louis.