I’ll never understand this idea that only people we 100% agree with are worth our time. Harris has lots of dumb ideas and lots of good ones. Like, well, basically everyone on earth.
He makes the exact point about the Republican Party you wish he would make in the very episode I linked.
Yeah this is a good summary. He has libertarian disease where he believes that turning the power of rationality and logic on everything will fix the world, which is why the moral panics about wokeness and the freakouts about people’s unwillingness to discuss race honestly, as he would see it. He’d be a more useful person if he saw the limits of a completely rational approach to politics, one of which is that you spend your time debating Ben Shapiro instead of just telling him to fuck off.
That’s similar to my take on him as well. I really enjoy his podcast when his guests work in the hard sciences or philosophy. Sam is great in that format at drilling into the topic and carrying on a conversation that a lay person like myself can still track. I appreciate that, and his debate with William Lane Craig(a popular christian apologist), and writings were valuable to me in my deconversion process after being raised in a fundagelical christian family. I’d be happy to have a beer or share a joint with him.
I tend not to find value in his takes on race, geopolitics, and US society and culture. His views are mishmash of OKish but idiosyncratic insight and eyebrow raising myopia. It’s useful that I’m familiar with his work for when I find myself in conversations with his fans, so I can understand how his views may have influenced their perspective. I’ve consumed content of other members of the IDW as well for similar reasons.
I framed my concerns like this, but I think the real problem with Harris and some others is perhaps more tied in with their concept of “merit” or desert and how it relates to life chances/opportunity/results. Even if Harris is a smart, generally well-read atheist, he’s got some of the “every man is an island” and society/economy is frictionless, and ends are apportioned in large measure based on virtue, which are hallmarks of a conservative worldview. Now, he would deny this characterization, because he knows better intellectually, but I feel like it’s the “deep background” that informs much of his socio-political thinking.
I’m no social determinist and I believe personal decisions are important, we often shape elements of our environment, etc., but there’s a spectrum along which one agrees or disagrees with such sentiments and I think his baseline assumptions about society and social life, and his shallow understanding of the thinking that informs extremists like Murray serve to infect his broader understanding about society. Again, however, at least he’s fairly smart and I believe he genuinely tries to get things right and is not a wimp in the face of controversy (though he’s perhaps half as smart as he thinks is often blind to his own errors).
This is a fair critique of some on his blind spots. Although I don’t think you are being fair about his views on luck and meritocracy. He had a whole episode on the dangers of thinking merit is the best social filter just this month.
I used to like Sam Harris in my edgy college days (we didn’t even have podcasts in those days!), but man, the guy fundamentally is just a bully. He was bullying Muslims in the wake of the 9/11 wave of Islamophobia and then he was bullying liberal college students with his bullshit IDW cancel culture grievances during the Trump era. I don’t know what his post-Trump avatar will be, but I 100% guarantee you he’ll be punching down because fundamentally he’s just a bully who picks on powerless people.
Ezra Klein leaving Vox for NYT opinion column. Will be moving his podcast from Vox to NYT.
Yglesias will continue podcasting for Vox, but he’s gone solo on substack.
If I had to make a guess I suspect some of the businessy people at Vox Media (not just Vox website) thought they were overseeing a product and not managing stars.
Vox trying to cut pay? Install new managing editors? Censorship?
I got Sam’s subscription thing for free but haven’t listened to an episode in ages. Unless you count falling asleep to his seemingly emotionless, monotone voice as listening.
This was solid if you want to go into the weeds a little bit.
First 20 minutes or so talks about vaccine history and skepticism. 25-32 minutes is about the typical stages on vaccine trials.
33 minutes it gets interesting.
New series on famous gamblers. I’ve only listened to one but it was pretty good.
Latest Chapo is a pretty good one, not super funny or anything, but it’s Will/Matt/Felix (Amber) talking to some guy from The New Republic about Obama’s memoir. Insightful at times about Obama’s perception of the world. I found it interesting.
I thought it was OK, but when they get going on their “Democrats have the same culpability as Republicans” shit, its tiresome, lazy and just plain wrong.
They simply never acknowledge that the biggest reason, by far, their preferred policies are not enacted is that the left wing of the party has not run good enough candidates. I’ll listen to critiques of the media machine and eDem fuckery, but there is plenty of money and momentum behind the progressive movement. Instead of the same tired “dems = GOP = bad” whine routine, get out there and do the real work if you care so much.
Well they did go to the UK and gave us Boris so they should stay far away from doing actual work imo
On The Media has an extended club remix of their last smash hit about Qanon and Gnostic cosmology:
Come again? Like, on purpose, or through sheer ineptitude? Why haven’t they run good enough candidates, do you think? Does ‘good enough’ just mean ‘wins’?
And not for nothing, but those guys were out door-knocking for Sanders in the dead of winter in the middle of a pandemic. There’s a lot of fair criticisms that can be leveled at them, but ‘they don’t put the work in’ isn’t one of them imo.
Those might be the single worst analogies ever posted.
Doesn’t matter how good of a candidate you are if Edems are going to drop $40 million on your proven completely worthless opponent. Like yea, the left could spend time trying to win races at the local level, but there just aren’t a lot of progressives out there that have the means to spend multiple years not making money.
I mean, yeah Riverman is wrong, but if all you can post is how shit everybody here is maybe you’ve got somewhere better to spend your time? If you don’t have somewhere better to be, maybe try not shitting where you eat for a bit and see how that goes?
This may be the second or third biggest reason.
The biggest reason IMO is the propaganda machine.
Apologies if ponied,
PSA: Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History on WW2 Japan episode 5 posted last week