You missed the point entirely, as unsubscribing is far easier than subscribing. The narcissism was in the pretense that he couldn't unsubscribe on his own. Thank you for this bit of female relational aggression; it's a helpful example for something I'm writing. Further: Substack fucked up on this one; I knew that Sam fanbois and fangirls would be around so I triple checked the "paid subs only" comment option and yet here non-paid comments get through anyway, sigh.
You "don't understand why I give this individual head space" when I very clearly explained in the first paragraph why I wrote this. I can do no more than that. I also don't think I have expressed great distress. The idea is kind of funny, actually -- if this essay is your idea of great distress, I hope you never are exposed to someone with PTSD actually experiencing great distress. It would probably kill you.
You were the one who broke social convention and stomped over a boundary by sniffily telling an author what she should and shouldn't write about. YOU did that. You made that mistaken move. Not Holly.
It's very clear that you're offended, but you have no right to be. You made the rude faux pas. If you were one of my subscribers I'd ban you outright. Nerve.
Is he also a Leo? He made me lol while striking my loyal Leo nerve. I know that horoscopes contain a lot of confirmation bias but when I first read that Leos are "fiercely loyal" I thought, "they at least got that part right." I can handle my own slings and arrows but fire them at those I care about <insert glowing eyes meme>
Make Contempt Great Again, Make Disdain Great Again. I'm not fool enough to let strangers bother me but I think cultivating a minimum of disdain is important and healthy even. I'm proud of my personal levels of disdain lol.
Now that I've buttered up Josh I'll butter you up and sincerely tell you that your pieces on the founding fathers and documents informed this attitude, which I'd started thinking deeply about during the pandemic. The rarity of strong moral character, precisely. Being disagreeable--not to be conflated with being a dick--is a severely underrated and essential trait. The founders effected change because they had it. Change in today's miasma will be effected by the same types of individuals.
Close enough, we'll make him honorary. The stars, sun and moon can deal with it. No joke, the word "magnanimous" was in that horoscope too. Wow, they were right about that too lol. We're in the middle of Leo season, we have to be magnanimous. It's our brand.
That and I've had a grateful past couple of days so I'm feeling all soft and fuzzy.
What other topics should I not write about? What is the appropriate response to having a desire to write about something that someone, say you, might not approve of my spending time on? How many times is it ok to write about something before I violate your standards for what is an acceptable way to spend my time? What else should I change? Is there anything else I'm doing with my life that I need to justify?
That was hundreds of years later. I'd have to look up the date, but I'm talking about the sack, by the Gauls, that caused the Roman's, to throw off their Kings and form a republic.
I think Trump broke Sam's brain. He's not alone, but he seems to have the worst case of TDS I've seen. He's all flipped around and doesn't have any real principles. Very strange to see it happen to someone who has clearly worked so hard on rationality.
It's fascinating to watch the author of Waking Up (a book I was deeply influenced by, about the benefits of mindfulness, meditation, etc.) allow his equanimity to be shattered by a carnival barker like Trump. It would not surprise me one bit if I found out that he, like his namesake Kamala, denounced the mRNA shots as rushed and illegitimate and declared that he would never get them during the summer and fall of 2020 before their completion & rollout (which, as we all recall, was deliberately delayed until after the election), only to instantly spin on his heel and demand that everyone get poked (at the barrel of a government gun, if necessary) the moment history could begin being rewritten to give Biden credit for ending the pandemic.
The most egregious hypocrisy along these lines was in the episode of late October 2020 wherein he and Andrew Sullivan talked about why Trump should not be re-elected. After they both spent years asserting Trump was a potential dictator, one of their criticisms of Trump? He didn't close the borders during COVID. He wasn't dictator-y *enough*. FFS.
It's really something, isn't it? Year Zero begins anew every morning for people like that. To me what's most striking is that they don't seem at all embarrassed that there's a public record of their writings, video & podcast interviews, etc. that shows exactly when they started contradicting yesterday's version of themselves based on nothing but what Trump said today. In a very real way, they've passively and voluntarily given Trump complete control of their psyches.
"they don't seem at all embarrassed" This is why I disagree with Refenestrated that Trump broke his brain. Trump merely activated this latent/dormant aspect of his personality. Something that didn't sit right with me long before I was politically aware and it's impossible to not see now is that liberalism/progressivism/leftism has always been hegemonic. There's nothing open-minded about it. Granted, all labels and ideologies are for weenies, but they're ones with the self-appointed Ubermensch narrative. There's a dearth of humility in thinking that of all the societies that have ever existed, we, products of the Noble Western Enlightenment, just happened to get everything right. It's not just arrogant it's statistically unlikely.
...."leftism has always been hegemonic..." because it unites some of the darker but all too common human tendencies:
1) A desire for conformity and a need/willingness to enforce it.
2) The capability for self deception that permits us to convince ourselves of the righteousness of our actions as part of an affirming herd all while committing the most heinous and despicable acts.
History seems to demonstrate positive feedback loops culminating in mass suffering and death at the hands of those who would force upon us that which they know is best.
Is this not a core message of Pyschology of Mass Formation & Madness of Crowds among many others?
One thing that plays heavily into it, that I often come back to, is Jonathan Haidt's comparison of values and traits between conservatives, liberals, and libertarians. Care/harm being an apex value for liberals certainly influences emotion, as does fairness being an apex value. This is how you get "the right side of history." By "apex" I mean look at the graph in the latter half of the video. These are head and shoulders above the others, while the other political types have their own biases but are on the whole more evenly balanced.
I don't think it's judgmental to call liberals emotional, which is how you get those feedback loops you talked about. Emotions are the ultimate feedback loop. I criticize liberalism not to be edgy but because I believe it has fundamental flaws, this being one of them. You've heard the (self-imposed) stereotype liberals are smarter than conservatives, but I think openness is being conflated with intelligence. Liberals are higher in openness and creativity, yes, which correlates with emotionality, for better and worse. I'm no philosophy buff, was it Kant or Hegel who believed in the categorical imperative? This concept is comparable to "what's good for the goose is good for the gander", which can very quickly go horrific places. As Haidt says in the video liberals are universalists, even remarking how odd it is that liberals care more about strangers than kin (it's in one of the graphs in the final couple minutes). Mass suffering at the hands of those who "know best", as you say.
not sure if it's spam to include YT links but here's the Haidt video
For research on my current book I've been reading a LOT of work by totalitarians and the philosophers who supported them. One of the things that is impossible to ignore is how utterly reasonable and shockingly moral and moralistic they all are. IF you grant their foundational premise (which is always some variant of "The world can be made into a good place if...") then what follows, up to and including the genocides, is the good and moral path.
The great delusion of the Post-WW2 culture wars is that Good and Evil are easy to see in the moment. They're not--everyone making policy in WW2 either thought they were on the side of the angels, or were cynically advancing a geopolitical agenda...and the ones that though they were on the side of the angels were not the ones you might expect a priori.
There seem to be four basic north-stars that people can orient to morally:
1) The individual
2) The family/tribe
3) The Good (as defined by religion, tradition, or philosophy)
4) The Future
And the level and sorts of mischief potential varies with each, but at least in the last few centuries it seems that the ruinous potential gets larger the further one moves from the individual.
I think a big part of the reason Sam’s position on this is so evil is because it’s so monumentally stupid. When he starts from the premise: The disease really was exceptionally dangerous and the vaccine really was safe and effective, what he’s actually saying is that someone making the decisions, maybe him, would be in a position to know both of those things unequivocally. Basically that person would be God. The fact that he’s not God is what makes it so stupid, and the damage they would do to people in implementing what they think is their superior understanding is what makes it so evil.
I'd like to point out that only the libertarians actually view these rights and principles as sacrosanct instead of as just privileges granted by our overlords. I *think* it would be impossible for me to become a statist of any sort or subscribe to organized religion as it entails abdicating my responsibility to use my own mind to determine what's right and acting in the best interest of myself and those I care about. When you realize, no internalize, that the government's existence owes to a mix of fear and a religious faith in the superstition of authority (cf. The Most Dangerous Superstition by Larken Rose), it becomes very hard to ever go back.
This may seem like a random aside inspired solely by your mention of liberals as the ones who view rights as privileges, but it also speaks to how any kind of statist is inadvertently — or for those enlightened few, deliberately — treating the state as their God and going through the civic motions as a sort of ritual. Sam Harris as one of the four horsemen of the new atheist movement rightly criticized organized religion but failed to realize that the state he's attempting to leverage for his ends is one of the most pervasive and dangerous Gods one could conceive of.
The single most brilliant thing Gore Vidal ever wrote was,
"So you believe the ends justify the means?"
"There are no ends, only means."
It's all about controlling the lives of others with both those who raised you and the anointed. I disagree with our libertarian friend in the respect that if you don't believe certain rights (like free will) are given to us by our "Creator", then it's much too easy to rationalize taking them away.
Reminds me of the famous quote by Lenin, in the context of how to implement total revolution, that the only principle the Party must follow is "Who, whom?"
Made my whole day when I saw your post announced on my Apple Watch. I actually clicked my heels and said “Holly wrote about Sam Harris again!” Unfortunately I had an appointment and had to wait several hours before reading it. Oh, the anticipation! Very few more richly deserve to be verbally taken down in this fashion. His ability to continue to spout his hypocritical nonsense at this late hour defies understanding. In this way, he is a near perfect mirror image of our former narcissist in chief! I’m sorry for your nightmare, but very thankful for the resulting post. Hopefully you can put it out of your mind now and sleep the sleep of the just tonight.
I'm all for deconstructing Sam Harris' fragile eggshell ego. Heck, it's why I became a paid subscriber. Honestly, I can't get enough of it. In fact, I want a regular feature on the topic. But I hate to miss out on reading comments that get a person banned unless they amount to obscenity or "fighting words." I get that creators get to make the rules. And as a simple lowly commenter, I offer my simple comment. My kids remind me that I'm not the main character in the story. *edit* to correct typo.
LOL, gotcha. First comment -- despite the explanation in the first paragraph, she doesn't know why I allow SH any space in my head. Second comment -- feigned profound hurt and offense at my "grouchy" response, and besides, look at the good she does! She's only concerned about me and my "great distress." Final comment -- more feigned horror, subtle implication that she's seen horrors that would make me shiver, thus that her mistaking this essay for "great distress" is some mark of virtuous empathy. LMAO.
It is particularly effective that you point this dynamic out being a woman. Fewer women than men notice this, as by default the average woman is more prone to come to heel in what is, at bottom, a feminine style of conversational manipulation.
You see it, and you say it. That does something important coming from a woman.
Yep. The male equivalent in this situation would be to say something like "LOL it's so funny to see everyone catching up to me; I knew Harris was an idiot years ago. I never spent one minute thinking he was smart" and thus invite the rest of the commenters to praise his great wisdom. Annoying but not nearly as insidious.
I mention this old anecdote all the time but when I worked in retail 20 yrs ago a bunch of us co-workers were talking about customers from hell. Us mere 2-3 males had no horror stories to tell. The females all had stories. I didn't document the stats but the prick customer was usually a woman. I reasoned that this happens because women, being women, know how to manipulate women. It reminds me of Chris Rock in *Bring The Pain* when he asked the question "who is more racist: white people or black people too?" "Black people, because we hate black people too. Everything white people don't like about about black people black people REALLY don't like about black people." It's the "black people vs. n-words-with-a-soft-A" bit.
I used to love Sam’s podcast for the variety of interesting topics and guests. His explorations into the phenomenon of consciousness are fascinating. At some point, though, he lost me due to the intellectual arrogance that kept popping up. He’s obviously a very bright guy, but he seems to have difficulty admitting he’s ever wrong or seeing possible errors in his own thinking. It really would have been refreshing to hear him occasionally say “I don’t know” or “I was wrong about that”.
One example is his drumbeating that people don’t have free will. He often contradicts this view by proclaiming that people should make certain choices (particularly those he agrees with). But he can’t quite explain how people without free will can make choices or how choices are even coherent in a worldview that can’t accommodate free will. He just makes these circular arguments that make my brain hurt no matter how hard I try to wrap my head around them. And I really have tried. Finally I concluded that just perhaps the issue isn’t that I lack the intellectual horsepower to follow his thinking, but perhaps he’s just incorrect or has some kind of necessary premise/axiomatic/definitional issue that obscures his thinking.
Overall, there seems to be a well of nihilism and Skinnerian reductionism in the guy, combined with a certainty that he’s smarter than you, that offsets his rationality for my tastes. And I’m sure he is genuinely well meaning on many things, but when I read that quote from The End of Faith, it sends chills down my spine. Arrogance is a difficult flaw to overcome. Maybe he could use a CDC-approved shot of humility.
Geez, Holly. In one paragraph I had to look up the meaning of 4 words, and I ain't no slouch when it comes to vocabulary. I recognized the words, but wasn't sure of the exact meanings. Thanks for broadening mine today. And thank you for clearly stating why people like Harris are cultists.
You missed the point entirely, as unsubscribing is far easier than subscribing. The narcissism was in the pretense that he couldn't unsubscribe on his own. Thank you for this bit of female relational aggression; it's a helpful example for something I'm writing. Further: Substack fucked up on this one; I knew that Sam fanbois and fangirls would be around so I triple checked the "paid subs only" comment option and yet here non-paid comments get through anyway, sigh.
You "don't understand why I give this individual head space" when I very clearly explained in the first paragraph why I wrote this. I can do no more than that. I also don't think I have expressed great distress. The idea is kind of funny, actually -- if this essay is your idea of great distress, I hope you never are exposed to someone with PTSD actually experiencing great distress. It would probably kill you.
You were the one who broke social convention and stomped over a boundary by sniffily telling an author what she should and shouldn't write about. YOU did that. You made that mistaken move. Not Holly.
It's very clear that you're offended, but you have no right to be. You made the rude faux pas. If you were one of my subscribers I'd ban you outright. Nerve.
The unmitigated contempt makes my heart sing. I too would be honored to have a friend like Josh.
I ❤️ him, his contempt, his attitude, his verbal acuity, and how trustworthy he is. I'm a very lucky nerd.
Is he also a Leo? He made me lol while striking my loyal Leo nerve. I know that horoscopes contain a lot of confirmation bias but when I first read that Leos are "fiercely loyal" I thought, "they at least got that part right." I can handle my own slings and arrows but fire them at those I care about <insert glowing eyes meme>
Make Contempt Great Again, Make Disdain Great Again. I'm not fool enough to let strangers bother me but I think cultivating a minimum of disdain is important and healthy even. I'm proud of my personal levels of disdain lol.
Now that I've buttered up Josh I'll butter you up and sincerely tell you that your pieces on the founding fathers and documents informed this attitude, which I'd started thinking deeply about during the pandemic. The rarity of strong moral character, precisely. Being disagreeable--not to be conflated with being a dick--is a severely underrated and essential trait. The founders effected change because they had it. Change in today's miasma will be effected by the same types of individuals.
Almost! His birthday is just *barely* outside the Leo range, by like two days.
Close enough, we'll make him honorary. The stars, sun and moon can deal with it. No joke, the word "magnanimous" was in that horoscope too. Wow, they were right about that too lol. We're in the middle of Leo season, we have to be magnanimous. It's our brand.
That and I've had a grateful past couple of days so I'm feeling all soft and fuzzy.
What other topics should I not write about? What is the appropriate response to having a desire to write about something that someone, say you, might not approve of my spending time on? How many times is it ok to write about something before I violate your standards for what is an acceptable way to spend my time? What else should I change? Is there anything else I'm doing with my life that I need to justify?
Very we'll said.
Thanks. I thought I was done writing about this guy, but I am operating on three hours of sleep after he gave me a nightmare, so fuck him, LOL.
I've had a similar view of Sam lately. Well since he was on Triggernometry. I learned about you from Darkhorse.
The phrase "Never Again" dates back at least to the beginning, of the Roman Republic. After the fist sack by the Gauls.
It was the Visigoths who sacked Rome, but I get your point.
That was hundreds of years later. I'd have to look up the date, but I'm talking about the sack, by the Gauls, that caused the Roman's, to throw off their Kings and form a republic.
https://www.unrv.com/empire/gallic-sack-of-rome.php
I think Trump broke Sam's brain. He's not alone, but he seems to have the worst case of TDS I've seen. He's all flipped around and doesn't have any real principles. Very strange to see it happen to someone who has clearly worked so hard on rationality.
I think he lost it after Hitch passed.
It's fascinating to watch the author of Waking Up (a book I was deeply influenced by, about the benefits of mindfulness, meditation, etc.) allow his equanimity to be shattered by a carnival barker like Trump. It would not surprise me one bit if I found out that he, like his namesake Kamala, denounced the mRNA shots as rushed and illegitimate and declared that he would never get them during the summer and fall of 2020 before their completion & rollout (which, as we all recall, was deliberately delayed until after the election), only to instantly spin on his heel and demand that everyone get poked (at the barrel of a government gun, if necessary) the moment history could begin being rewritten to give Biden credit for ending the pandemic.
The most egregious hypocrisy along these lines was in the episode of late October 2020 wherein he and Andrew Sullivan talked about why Trump should not be re-elected. After they both spent years asserting Trump was a potential dictator, one of their criticisms of Trump? He didn't close the borders during COVID. He wasn't dictator-y *enough*. FFS.
It's really something, isn't it? Year Zero begins anew every morning for people like that. To me what's most striking is that they don't seem at all embarrassed that there's a public record of their writings, video & podcast interviews, etc. that shows exactly when they started contradicting yesterday's version of themselves based on nothing but what Trump said today. In a very real way, they've passively and voluntarily given Trump complete control of their psyches.
"they don't seem at all embarrassed" This is why I disagree with Refenestrated that Trump broke his brain. Trump merely activated this latent/dormant aspect of his personality. Something that didn't sit right with me long before I was politically aware and it's impossible to not see now is that liberalism/progressivism/leftism has always been hegemonic. There's nothing open-minded about it. Granted, all labels and ideologies are for weenies, but they're ones with the self-appointed Ubermensch narrative. There's a dearth of humility in thinking that of all the societies that have ever existed, we, products of the Noble Western Enlightenment, just happened to get everything right. It's not just arrogant it's statistically unlikely.
...."leftism has always been hegemonic..." because it unites some of the darker but all too common human tendencies:
1) A desire for conformity and a need/willingness to enforce it.
2) The capability for self deception that permits us to convince ourselves of the righteousness of our actions as part of an affirming herd all while committing the most heinous and despicable acts.
History seems to demonstrate positive feedback loops culminating in mass suffering and death at the hands of those who would force upon us that which they know is best.
Is this not a core message of Pyschology of Mass Formation & Madness of Crowds among many others?
One thing that plays heavily into it, that I often come back to, is Jonathan Haidt's comparison of values and traits between conservatives, liberals, and libertarians. Care/harm being an apex value for liberals certainly influences emotion, as does fairness being an apex value. This is how you get "the right side of history." By "apex" I mean look at the graph in the latter half of the video. These are head and shoulders above the others, while the other political types have their own biases but are on the whole more evenly balanced.
I don't think it's judgmental to call liberals emotional, which is how you get those feedback loops you talked about. Emotions are the ultimate feedback loop. I criticize liberalism not to be edgy but because I believe it has fundamental flaws, this being one of them. You've heard the (self-imposed) stereotype liberals are smarter than conservatives, but I think openness is being conflated with intelligence. Liberals are higher in openness and creativity, yes, which correlates with emotionality, for better and worse. I'm no philosophy buff, was it Kant or Hegel who believed in the categorical imperative? This concept is comparable to "what's good for the goose is good for the gander", which can very quickly go horrific places. As Haidt says in the video liberals are universalists, even remarking how odd it is that liberals care more about strangers than kin (it's in one of the graphs in the final couple minutes). Mass suffering at the hands of those who "know best", as you say.
not sure if it's spam to include YT links but here's the Haidt video
youtu.be/tT89wp56h8A?si=RyB1OStBtx1amlSm
For research on my current book I've been reading a LOT of work by totalitarians and the philosophers who supported them. One of the things that is impossible to ignore is how utterly reasonable and shockingly moral and moralistic they all are. IF you grant their foundational premise (which is always some variant of "The world can be made into a good place if...") then what follows, up to and including the genocides, is the good and moral path.
The great delusion of the Post-WW2 culture wars is that Good and Evil are easy to see in the moment. They're not--everyone making policy in WW2 either thought they were on the side of the angels, or were cynically advancing a geopolitical agenda...and the ones that though they were on the side of the angels were not the ones you might expect a priori.
There seem to be four basic north-stars that people can orient to morally:
1) The individual
2) The family/tribe
3) The Good (as defined by religion, tradition, or philosophy)
4) The Future
And the level and sorts of mischief potential varies with each, but at least in the last few centuries it seems that the ruinous potential gets larger the further one moves from the individual.
The irony of Sam advocating for a system that would just as casually dump him in a shallow, unmarked grave as anyone else is almost funny.
He is the perfect exemplar of why Plato's Republic is an absolutely horrible idea.
Right?!?!?
I think a big part of the reason Sam’s position on this is so evil is because it’s so monumentally stupid. When he starts from the premise: The disease really was exceptionally dangerous and the vaccine really was safe and effective, what he’s actually saying is that someone making the decisions, maybe him, would be in a position to know both of those things unequivocally. Basically that person would be God. The fact that he’s not God is what makes it so stupid, and the damage they would do to people in implementing what they think is their superior understanding is what makes it so evil.
Yep. Narcissism is one hell of a drug.
Nailed it!
I'd like to point out that only the libertarians actually view these rights and principles as sacrosanct instead of as just privileges granted by our overlords. I *think* it would be impossible for me to become a statist of any sort or subscribe to organized religion as it entails abdicating my responsibility to use my own mind to determine what's right and acting in the best interest of myself and those I care about. When you realize, no internalize, that the government's existence owes to a mix of fear and a religious faith in the superstition of authority (cf. The Most Dangerous Superstition by Larken Rose), it becomes very hard to ever go back.
This may seem like a random aside inspired solely by your mention of liberals as the ones who view rights as privileges, but it also speaks to how any kind of statist is inadvertently — or for those enlightened few, deliberately — treating the state as their God and going through the civic motions as a sort of ritual. Sam Harris as one of the four horsemen of the new atheist movement rightly criticized organized religion but failed to realize that the state he's attempting to leverage for his ends is one of the most pervasive and dangerous Gods one could conceive of.
Great to hear of a fellow traveler in the world of Larkin Rose!
The single most brilliant thing Gore Vidal ever wrote was,
"So you believe the ends justify the means?"
"There are no ends, only means."
It's all about controlling the lives of others with both those who raised you and the anointed. I disagree with our libertarian friend in the respect that if you don't believe certain rights (like free will) are given to us by our "Creator", then it's much too easy to rationalize taking them away.
Reminds me of the famous quote by Lenin, in the context of how to implement total revolution, that the only principle the Party must follow is "Who, whom?"
Made my whole day when I saw your post announced on my Apple Watch. I actually clicked my heels and said “Holly wrote about Sam Harris again!” Unfortunately I had an appointment and had to wait several hours before reading it. Oh, the anticipation! Very few more richly deserve to be verbally taken down in this fashion. His ability to continue to spout his hypocritical nonsense at this late hour defies understanding. In this way, he is a near perfect mirror image of our former narcissist in chief! I’m sorry for your nightmare, but very thankful for the resulting post. Hopefully you can put it out of your mind now and sleep the sleep of the just tonight.
I'm all for deconstructing Sam Harris' fragile eggshell ego. Heck, it's why I became a paid subscriber. Honestly, I can't get enough of it. In fact, I want a regular feature on the topic. But I hate to miss out on reading comments that get a person banned unless they amount to obscenity or "fighting words." I get that creators get to make the rules. And as a simple lowly commenter, I offer my simple comment. My kids remind me that I'm not the main character in the story. *edit* to correct typo.
LOL, gotcha. First comment -- despite the explanation in the first paragraph, she doesn't know why I allow SH any space in my head. Second comment -- feigned profound hurt and offense at my "grouchy" response, and besides, look at the good she does! She's only concerned about me and my "great distress." Final comment -- more feigned horror, subtle implication that she's seen horrors that would make me shiver, thus that her mistaking this essay for "great distress" is some mark of virtuous empathy. LMAO.
It is particularly effective that you point this dynamic out being a woman. Fewer women than men notice this, as by default the average woman is more prone to come to heel in what is, at bottom, a feminine style of conversational manipulation.
You see it, and you say it. That does something important coming from a woman.
Yep. The male equivalent in this situation would be to say something like "LOL it's so funny to see everyone catching up to me; I knew Harris was an idiot years ago. I never spent one minute thinking he was smart" and thus invite the rest of the commenters to praise his great wisdom. Annoying but not nearly as insidious.
Hahahahah! The classic male cerebral narcissist--you pegged him.
And he's always a Sam fan-boi.
I mention this old anecdote all the time but when I worked in retail 20 yrs ago a bunch of us co-workers were talking about customers from hell. Us mere 2-3 males had no horror stories to tell. The females all had stories. I didn't document the stats but the prick customer was usually a woman. I reasoned that this happens because women, being women, know how to manipulate women. It reminds me of Chris Rock in *Bring The Pain* when he asked the question "who is more racist: white people or black people too?" "Black people, because we hate black people too. Everything white people don't like about about black people black people REALLY don't like about black people." It's the "black people vs. n-words-with-a-soft-A" bit.
Brilliantly written, well argued. I have nothing to add other than my general jumping-up-and-down punching the air behavior. *Wild cheering!*
-Dan Sawyer
Brilliant post!
Sam Harris owes humanity an apology, or several.
I used to love Sam’s podcast for the variety of interesting topics and guests. His explorations into the phenomenon of consciousness are fascinating. At some point, though, he lost me due to the intellectual arrogance that kept popping up. He’s obviously a very bright guy, but he seems to have difficulty admitting he’s ever wrong or seeing possible errors in his own thinking. It really would have been refreshing to hear him occasionally say “I don’t know” or “I was wrong about that”.
One example is his drumbeating that people don’t have free will. He often contradicts this view by proclaiming that people should make certain choices (particularly those he agrees with). But he can’t quite explain how people without free will can make choices or how choices are even coherent in a worldview that can’t accommodate free will. He just makes these circular arguments that make my brain hurt no matter how hard I try to wrap my head around them. And I really have tried. Finally I concluded that just perhaps the issue isn’t that I lack the intellectual horsepower to follow his thinking, but perhaps he’s just incorrect or has some kind of necessary premise/axiomatic/definitional issue that obscures his thinking.
Overall, there seems to be a well of nihilism and Skinnerian reductionism in the guy, combined with a certainty that he’s smarter than you, that offsets his rationality for my tastes. And I’m sure he is genuinely well meaning on many things, but when I read that quote from The End of Faith, it sends chills down my spine. Arrogance is a difficult flaw to overcome. Maybe he could use a CDC-approved shot of humility.
Geez, Holly. In one paragraph I had to look up the meaning of 4 words, and I ain't no slouch when it comes to vocabulary. I recognized the words, but wasn't sure of the exact meanings. Thanks for broadening mine today. And thank you for clearly stating why people like Harris are cultists.