Have him listen to this, where Sam Harris calls out RFK’s bullshit on vaccines and many other things. Harris basically calls him a malignant fraud supported by idiots. #325 — A Few Thoughts About RFK Jr. - Making Sense with Sam Harris
1 Like
Interesting. I haven’t listened to Sam Harris in a looong time but I’m curious how he justifies calling RFK a fraud while palling around with other grifters who profit off basically the same grift as RFK with basically the same marks
I don’t really want to get into the Harris fight again but your perception of him is mistaken. He has called out the people you think he is pals with, especially with respect to covid and vaccines.
He does hold some dumb ideas still, particularity around racial issues, but he just isn’t the right wing demagogue some people here want to paint him as.
1 Like
You’re correct that I’m pretty uninformed about his takes, particularly anything from the past 5 years or so. Is he no longer a Rogan/Shapiro/Peterson bro / IDW guy?
He never was. Listen to five minutes of the linked podcast. He may have been a bit soft of Rogan for personal/business reasons in the past, but he calls out IDW people in pretty stark terms in the podcast linked above.
And don’t even get him started on The Muslims
1 Like
Given the state of things in the information space, I’m glad Harris hasn’t gone off the deep end completely, but he still is who he always was, a 3rd rate intellect with a narcissistic streak and horrible views on certain religious minorities, identity politics, ‘The Left’, (I’m not sure this is accurate but I think he’s an oranges of COVID guy too), but I assume he still has some rightwing fans, so to the extent they hear vaccines are good and the innocent man is bad, that’s a win.
What is an oranges of Covid guy?
He does not have horrible views on religious minorities. He has accurate views of religions. His most common target is Islam, hardly a minority religion.
1 Like
As I said I could be wrong, but I think he recently had some lab leakers on the show bemoaning the scientific establishment, I recall the conversation as friendly, I could look it up.
In many places where the fates of hundreds of millions of Muslims are decided, they are minorities. But I’ll just cede that my phrasing wasn’t optimal. He has terrible views on Islam which to my knowledge he still holds.
Edit: yeah, episode #311 on lab leaks
Grunching, but this probably refers to Trump repeatedly trying to say ‘origins’ but his mouth kept saying ‘oranges’.
1 Like
It was briefly and magnificently the title of one of the threads here, I may have gone too meta lol
1 Like
Also I just listened to 17 minutes of him on rfk jr, and while I can’t completely fist pump some of the things he says about tangential things, he obliterates him, and that’s good work Sam.
It’s right up there with ACB pronouncing poignant with a hard g for me. I’ll always laugh my ass off when I hear it.
1 Like
The lab leak show was not good (but not anti-science). Decoding the Gurus did a 2 hr-ish episode explaining why (mainly fairly detailed scientific reasons that wouldn’t be known to most without a specific understanding of virology). Harris was raked over the coals in his subreddit for it (which is not uncommon, unlike subreddits for people like Lex Friedman) and I think he’s finally separating more from any association with IDW folks.
2 Likes
One of his core beliefs is absolute open science in that all things should be subject to scientific study. This leads him to platform some really bad people like the bell curve moron.
He has trouble sometimes separating “race is a valid subject for science” from all science into race is valid.
Same logic failure on lab leak theory.
1 Like
That’s fair, that’s what I was going for there, he’s not anti-science in any substantive way but he weirdly overinvested into defending the reputation of bell curve guy, and I think that was continuous with his identity politics/The Left schtick, but I’m not denying that he is good on most things.
I bring this up from time to time, but his command of philosophical topics is not that strong, and it’s a little tilting when for example he starts talking about objective morality as if he’s a seasoned moral philosopher when he’s more like a first year grad student. I also caught his conversation with Tim Maudlin on the foundations of physics and he just talks in a weird way that might convince most he understands the nuances of the subject but if you understand the nuances of the subject you’d find Sam to be out of his depth.
This is a much bigger discussion but I honestly don’t think he has terrible views on Islam. He has the same view of Islam as he does all religion. I have the same views. What people constantly get confused by is they can’t separate a critique of Islam from a critique of muslims. He is always careful to make the obvious distinction and yet his detractors constantly act like he is criticizing the latter. It’s just disingenuous.
In any case I don’t put Sam Harris on the lazy glide path to reactionism that plenty of other public people take. Actually being a “third rate intellectual”, in my mind, makes his resistance that more admirable. It must be tempting to dip the toes into the right wing fever swamps to get some money and notoriety that otherwise might not be coming.
I agree but I’m notsure it’s a fair criticism given the depth of topics he covers on his show. It’s not really fair to expect him to be a world class expert on them all. He certainly has far more nuanced and scientifically informed discussions than anyone else in the so called IWD.
Feels like this has to be fake.
1 Like