If you mean the ideas then yes. Anyone not phobic to the ideas is not a true progressive. It’s easily the most anti-progressive of the major religions.
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Harris seems like the kind of person who thinks that reason can be used to create the sort of supposedly neutral and ostensibly color-blind laws that critical race theory says can be subtly biased and lead to unjust outcomes.
As the interviewer, Harris doesn’t say much about what he personally believes while talking to Murray, but he seems to think that race is a biological concept and not a social construct. (I suspect he feels the same way about gender.)
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I mean he’s just a philosopher isn’t he? Lots of philosophers are like this, speaking in black/white ways with irrationally narrow focus, and come across as conservative (many, probably most, are). It’s why a lot of philosophical debate is purely academic (political and sociological debate too)
Disclaimer: never followed this guy closely (I was like 10 when he was big)
Let me know if you consider yourself a true progressive like Sam Harris.
https://twitter.com/steinkobbe/status/1111991441134419968?s=20
When someone is a public figure where they land precisely on the political spectrum isn’t all that relevant. This is the Joe Rogan debate all over again (before he seemed to truly go off the deep end).
I’m sure if we gave Harris a survey of basic positions on issues any overall analysis would put him on the left side of the American spectrum. The same was true of Rogan even when it was quite obvious that whatever political impact he had was overwhelmingly the promotion of egregiously right-wing attitudes through his own comments and his guests.
I’m not super familiar with Harris, so this may be somewhat unfair but the whole logic bro genre always acts as a gateway to the far right, or at least young-person-Trumpism that’s anti-religious and fine with taxing the rich but despises transgender people more than anything.
Trying to be open-minded towards Charles Murray and ideas that are uncomfortable to liberals doesn’t make an individual personally not a liberal or make them right-wing. When it’s part of your public work, however, and one of the only ways in which you stand out, it may as well.
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Also, wtf. Hanging out with Ben Shapiro in any venue without the objective of relentlessly mocking him calls into question your intellect and/or integrity.
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This. Probably better described as a socialist with a strong dislike of religion. However, he thinks Islam is worse than (modern) Christianity, so that generates a lot of blowback. He is anti-woke, which probably leads him to “entertaining” some bad ideas, particularly regarding race, or more properly, the history of race. I stopped supporting his podcast a few years ago and am not into meditation, but Harris is heterodox, probably more left than most dems in congress.
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This is a very dumb series of tweets. Anyway if we want to keep discussing this we can move it to a new thread. I don’t have a huge desire to do so though. The reactionary impetus of the left to defend Islam has been discussed at length. While it comes from a generally good place, it’s completely misguided and leads so many to bend over backwards to defend really bad ideas that oppress millions.
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50 new posts overnight! What did Elon do this time?
clicks thread
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Sam Harris was one of Bari Weiss’s IDW homeboys. He’s about as “left wing” as Bret Stephens.
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I don’t know this guy but it sounds like you described Bill Maher.
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That’s not an accurate description of his relationship with the IDW.
Believing some of these people when they say they have these deep liberal beliefs is like hearing someone do a “I don’t have a racist bone in my body, BUT …” take and coming away thinking “That guy is not racist, he clearly says so”.
But also most people are never just one thing. Someone that is embedded in Fox News propaganda 24/7 will present at 100% conservative across the board, but most people aren’t like that. Most people have a mix of liberal and conservative beliefs. People like Harris are allowed to have some opinions that are liberal and some that are conservative. The real question is on any particular topic, is his opinion credible or relevant?
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Exactly. Overall he holds more left wing beliefs than right wing. I wouldn’t put any stock in his opinions on race for example. He is just plain wrong and frankly ignorant on that topic (in the sense of undereducated).
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Um, yes it does. Murray’s a knuckle-dragging eugenicist, no one should be “open-minded” toward his brand of nonsense.
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If there’s one thing we should have learned this year is to stop believing people who say this.
Especially when they explicitly do not support people like Bernie and AOC who are the only ones actually fighting for wealth redistribution.
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He gives away 10% of his personal and corporate earnings every month.
On this podcast Sam said something along the lines of he thinks Murray is the most unfairly maligned person in the world. Murray’s chief claim in his book is that we should stop giving welfare to blacks because they are less intelligent and won’t use the money effectively. Not sure how you square this.