Decoding The Gurus / Sam Harris: Right to Reply

The Tamil Tigers learned terrorism from Hezbollah like the perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide and the genocide in the Guatemalan mountains learned from Israelis.

Rod Hodges

2024-05-28 04:03:06 +0000 UTC

I used to practice quite intensive meditation for a few years, even taught Mindfulness to other people. I also studied Neuroscience at Uni. I’ve calmed down a lot about it all over the years since - primarily I take issue with Sam’s forwarding the idea that the thoughts and emotions simply come and go and leave no trace. This isn’t the way the brain actually works, and Sam should know that. Signals continuously propagate through the brain which is constantly tweaking and adjusting the connectivity between neurones based on that activity. In this way thoughts and emotions do leave ‘traces’, which is how we are able to then remember what we were thinking/feeling at certain points - the existence of memory alone should be enough to tell any neuroscientist that there is no such thing as a ‘frictionless brain’ which perceptions merely pass through.

Nicholas Williams

2024-04-01 06:46:46 +0000 UTC

In days gone by I would’ve gobbled up Sam’s thought stream like fried rice. Glad that I’m out of that hole now - I still think he has some decent things to say about certain topics (eg. free will) but this interview was a really good demonstration of how stubborn and poor a conversationist he can be. I think what makes him really intolerable at times is how ‘above it all’ he seems to think he is, when from the outside it is so clear that he’s just as ideologically entrenched as the next person. I don’t know if anyone here has listened to his interview with Rory Stewart, but he got butt-hurt that a guy who has way more direct experience of the Middle East than he does didn’t agree with him. His response was essentially to dig in and seem surprised: ‘I would have thought Rory of all people would understand my point’. Yes, Sam, maybe it’s time to change your mind, or at least your emphasis.

Nicholas Williams

2024-04-01 06:29:54 +0000 UTC

Usually I can’t wait to listen to a new episode of DTG. This one I’m consuming in bite sized segments, it’s rough. You guys don’t get enough credit for your patience, it’s admirable.

Shawn

2024-02-22 19:28:15 +0000 UTC

Aye aye, we all can do things that annoy each other! Different standards and whatnot. Anyway, whatever the case I think we all agree on the harm that the guru folk do so that seems more significant to me!

Christopher Kavanagh

2024-02-19 11:02:03 +0000 UTC

Yes definitely. I agree and I’ve learned a lot about how to act online through this experience. Cheers to you you both ❤️

Bertrand Sperling

2024-02-19 10:59:49 +0000 UTC

However, maybe dial down the intensity? Just my 2 cents.

Christopher Kavanagh

2024-02-19 10:50:41 +0000 UTC

I'll ask but in any case, appreciate all the previous support!

Christopher Kavanagh

2024-02-19 10:42:08 +0000 UTC

Yeah of course people can block when they want, and I was being really annoying with the tagging and I shouldn’t have, but I wish Matt or bad stats would’ve just said “stop” instead of blocking me.

Bertrand Sperling

2024-02-19 10:28:18 +0000 UTC

I mean aren't people allowed to block someone if they don't like the comments? I think people can manage their feeds as they see fit. As for the support, it's appreciated but it's still ok to disagree with you. I don't think it's an attack to be blocked. I genuinely mean cheers. Blocking people for whatever reason is down to each person. For me... I think part of the issue is you keep tagging people into threads. I'm not a fan of that either.

Christopher Kavanagh

2024-02-19 10:22:30 +0000 UTC

I didn’t start making comments like this until he blocked me. Not sure what has changed with you guys as you have grown. I have supported you since before you started this project.

Bertrand Sperling

2024-02-19 10:07:56 +0000 UTC

Perhaps for comments like this? Anyway, cheers and god bless.

Christopher Kavanagh

2024-02-19 08:50:23 +0000 UTC

No worry Amy! You are entitled to your opinions and you might not agree with our assessment anyway (but you can probably expect by now that we will express them!). In any case we appreciate the feedback and support!

Christopher Kavanagh

2024-02-19 08:31:44 +0000 UTC

Fair. I have the same general feeling in terms of my social media posts or IG stories. I do a few Palestine related ones, but I literally don’t know anyone who is in favor of genocide or ethnic cleansing or bombing children, so my opinions are both unremarkable and won’t move any needles (though i do think letters/emails to electeds are worthwhile.)

Daniel Reed Miller

2024-02-19 05:08:30 +0000 UTC

I found the conversation with Eiynah perfectly fine. She doesn't agree with me on some stuff and I don't agree with her. She's more left than I am. And we have stated our opinion on 'Gaza' as far as it is relevant, we think the massacre on Oct 7th was horrific and that the suffering of civilians in Gaza currently is terrible. Ideally, you would want peace agreements and moderate leaders/regimes willing to compromise for peace. Apologists and ideologues are unfortunately legion and the current conflict just seems to be entrenching the extremists. I also REALLY think that the opinions of two random academics who do not have influence on anything to do with the conflict are fairly pointless things to be concerned with.

Christopher Kavanagh

2024-02-19 03:28:01 +0000 UTC

Yeah true. I actually enjoyed her interview of Chris. It was in good faith on both sides and a good example of how people can both agree and disagree on the nuances of issues, and indeed have a “polite conversation” that doesn’t sugarcoat differences.

Daniel Reed Miller

2024-02-19 03:21:31 +0000 UTC

@brainbiter Can you elaborate on that?

Amy S

2024-02-18 19:02:50 +0000 UTC

Or you could ask how he thinks it’s gone for secular West Bank fattah? 🤷

Brainbiter

2024-02-18 18:24:20 +0000 UTC

Yeah she’d gone off my radar after excoriating interview with Chris but again caught my eye now and clearly not Harris’ brand of ex- Muslim as she commented on his recent remarks. Be good if Chris or Matt , despite reluctance, to be involved in worldly issues,would state a position on Gaza

Brainbiter

2024-02-18 18:08:07 +0000 UTC

Haha true, what a weird journey she’s had. Nor did he mention his arch-critic and former fan/colleague Eiynah Muhammed.

Daniel Reed Miller

2024-02-18 17:09:25 +0000 UTC

He also didn’t mention his Athiest colleagues and Right wing Nut Aayan Hirsi Ali has now discovered Jesus.

Brainbiter

2024-02-18 15:05:32 +0000 UTC

One of the reasons this podcast is different is that they’re non -American voices. More I listen to US podcasts more I hear a ‘specialness’ that’s terrifying. Then it’s a small step to fighting American exceptionalism . Wonder if lads would do that episode…( while agreeing Russian/ Chinese exceptionalism also bonkers)

Brainbiter

2024-02-18 15:03:29 +0000 UTC

Thinking about this more. Harris was fairly outrageous in his comments. His recent interview with some dude John Gray was way more measured. Don’t think you do yourselves any favours by letting crazy stuff pass. You’re genuinely serving a function in online space but sometimes hard to know how seriously you feel about it.

Brainbiter

2024-02-18 14:57:54 +0000 UTC

Good points. Thanks. Maybe I’ll listen to more Sam Harris to get a feel for his talking patterns. I don’t know if I’ll be able to stand more of him though. Anyway, I should be keeping my mouth shut because you know way more about this than I do. And I trust your reasoning as well. Some of it is beyond my brain capacity so maybe that’s the issue. Ha. I have to say, and should have said, that I think you and Matt are doing a great thing by making this podcast. Not only do I enjoy listening to it, but I’ve also learned so much. You really are both good at what you do. I also appreciate you taking the time to listen to and interact with your audience members. Even the difficult ones 😵‍💫. Your sincerity shows. Thank you!

Amy S

2024-02-18 06:50:42 +0000 UTC

I obviously should have seen it more clearly years ago, but that moment when he said “the barbarians are inside the gates” really crystallized for me just how racist and reactionary he really is.

Daniel Reed Miller

2024-02-18 05:15:38 +0000 UTC

It was pretty incredible stuff wasn’t it? My remaining respect for him went right over the cliff by the end of it.

Daniel Reed Miller

2024-02-18 04:59:25 +0000 UTC

Right?? My god, you could seriously use him as a case example on the dangers of meditation in reifying the very self and the blind spots and delusions that the practice aims to deconstruct

Daniel Reed Miller

2024-02-18 04:57:58 +0000 UTC

I had already become a lot less of a fan of Sam over the last half decade, but wow… he really tanked whatever remaining respect i had for him here. The coup de grace was his saying he’d essentially ally with Christian nationalists in opposition to the (sheerly delusional hypothetical) threat of an Islamist takeover of America. Incredible. His blindness to the actual present moment threat of fundamentalist Christian terror and autocracy is truly something to behold, given the values of rationalism and liberalism he professes to have. And never before this did i grok just how actually (howsoever unconsciously) racist he is. My God Sam, time for another year-long meditation retreat to hunt down those blind spots of your illusory self!! (And not to mention his seeming incapability at having an actual conversation and not just endlessly monologuing, and interrupting every time someone raises the briefest contrary point. Oof. So tedious.)

Daniel Reed Miller

2024-02-18 04:52:10 +0000 UTC

It isn’t nitpicking. Sam’s produced multiple podcasts and articles on this specific point (the need to take motivations stated by extremists seriously when they state them). It isn’t a statement or position he lightly throws out. Indeed, it’s typically the ‘evidence’ he uses to dismiss all relevant research, as he claims (as he did in this interview) that no researchers accept there is sincere belief in afterlife rewards. That is wrong but it is not an incidental point he sometimes makes… he’s been arguing the same thing for probably a decade now.

Christopher Kavanagh

2024-02-17 22:45:42 +0000 UTC

The podcast 'it could happen here' did an interesting podcast about Hasbara (Israeli propaganda): https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-it-could-happen-here-30717896/

Emma

2024-02-17 12:45:45 +0000 UTC

I know I'm preaching to the choir here. But I think the bit I hated the most from Sam was when he kept saying that what Israel is doing is fine because their motives are pure and all they want to do is defeat hamas rather than wanting to kill civilians on purpose. Israel has been lusting over Palestinian land for decades. I'm pretty sure it's not a tragedy for Netanyahu that he conveniently just "needs" to kill 10s of 1000s of Palestinians who are, in his mind, squatting on land he considers rightfully his. And even aside from the numbers killed right now, they are also bombing the shit out of critical infrastructure which has the side effect of making the place likely uninhabitable in the future. You have to be very, very credulous to believe Israel has no additional motives other than killing hamas. I hope this is not against the rules, but I am doing my tiny little bit to try and fight back by supporting the oxfam Gaza appeal: https://www.oxfam.org/en/what-we-do/emergencies/gaza-crisis-appeal

Emma

2024-02-17 10:23:32 +0000 UTC

Yeah I noticed the way he was using hamas and the Palestinian people basically interchangeably! Disgusting!

Emma

2024-02-17 10:14:53 +0000 UTC

Appreciate that and yes… Sam speaks very confidently and misrepresents how damning any of the Slack messages are. The scientists weren’t lying, just being scientists and discussing ideas and revising views. They put their opinion and their reasons in the papers they published. The Slack is just normal scientists discussing things.

Christopher Kavanagh

2024-02-17 07:40:37 +0000 UTC

It's exceptionally frustrating how he complains about people not being charitable and cultivating mindfulness, and then does this frequently. Like, how can someone be this uncharitable and unaware? If I wrote fiction with characters like this, I'd be told I was being way too on the nose.

Adam

2024-02-17 04:53:57 +0000 UTC

The way I see it is maybe you’ve got these old fashioned Hamas types who are unihibited and unabashadly vocal about their antisemetic beliefs and then maybe you’ve got this younger generation of Hamas who are rolling their eyes saying “Dad, you are so embarassing! You can’t just run around saying that you want to eliminate the state of Israel.” And then they go ahead and mold the group’s language to suit the times. But anyway, I just don’t see Sam as being inconsistent. I just think you may be taking what he says too literally and trying to nitpick his every word so you can use them against him. I mean, perhaps Hamas has become savvier over the years and is changing their language and their motivations a bit to sound more appealing to the rest of the world. And Sam is just, for that reason, not trusting them. Which makes sense. And well… eh, it just seems like you’re meticulously trying to make every word of his fit together and then when one piece doesn’t quite fit perfectly into the puzzle you use that one to shove up his arse. I think perhaps as an anthropologist you’re interested in people’s motivations wheter political, religious, whatever it may be. You also have way more academic knowledge and experience on the subject than Sam does. But in your writing, when you just explained to me the difference between your model of Hamas and Sam’s model, that was much clearer and more interesting to me than trying to interpret all of that roundabout nitpicking that confused the heck out of me.

Amy S

2024-02-17 02:42:57 +0000 UTC

-long support of your project!

Bertrand Sperling

2024-02-17 02:18:57 +0000 UTC

Matt blocked me on Twitter because he is a thin-skinned little bitch! I’m cancelling my years

Bertrand Sperling

2024-02-17 02:18:33 +0000 UTC

Thanks for your eloquent response. I imagine that many of the Israeli soldiers who are fighting in Gaza will be wracked with guilt for years.

Linda Sears

2024-02-17 01:03:22 +0000 UTC

I know Matt (and probably Chris too but I don't recall) has mentioned that when you let it wash over you, the monologues from these gurus seem reasonable, but I'm genuinely embarrassed that only now while listening to this episode do I realize just how much that's the case. As a former Harris fan, I'm really disturbed listening to Sam talk near the beginning about how the lab leek is still on equal footing with a zoonotic origin and that its apparent supression and the lying from scientists is a failure of honest dialogue and inquiry. I'm of course paraphrasing above, but the way he says it really does just sound like peak I'm just rationaly calmly explaining the situation as if it's plain facts. Hell, so far as I can tell he 100% believes that. What so deeply bothers me about this is that 6 or 7 years ago, had I heard him say something like that (and rest assured he says a lot on a lot of things, and all of it in that tone) I would've fell for it, especially if he said it in an environment with little pushback like, oh, I don't know, one of his ASMR monologues? Frankly, I'm just embarrassed. Anyway, I rarely post in general, but this (and other Sam Harris adjacent things have been on my mind for some time). Is there a recovering Sam Harris fan group or something? This show I suppose? Keep up the great work, Chris and Matt!

Adam

2024-02-17 01:00:03 +0000 UTC

Oof. 10 minutes in and I'm already struggling. On the lab leak theory I find Sam's unapologetic stance of 'I wasn't aware of that information prior to the interview I did, I just read their book' really annoying. But Sam is not a investigative journalist, or a scientist. I am expecting too much that he would actually critically research the topic of his episodes rather than selecting subjects that align with pre-existing beliefs he's inclined to accept without skepticism.

Gray

2024-02-16 22:22:15 +0000 UTC

There is no sin of moral equivalence morality is personal not an objective fact. Sam despite his strongest protestations is racist. He racistly assumes that a large proportion of the Muslim world are Jihadi or Jihadi prone. This is horse shit

toby cokes

2024-02-16 18:17:33 +0000 UTC

Would “analogy as proof” be a good category for the guruometer? Even terrible analogies? There are multiple measurable ways to prove the “blind spot”. There are ZERO ways to prove the reality of the elusive self other than assertions. The closest testable observation I can think of is that a specific experience tends to produce specific experiences. It would be interesting (scratch that, it would be tedious) to count how many times Sam’s sole evidence for something was an analogy. They just.wouldn’t.stop.

AnnieB

2024-02-16 15:57:43 +0000 UTC

Right!? This drove me mad. "Two anthropologists I spoke to had bad opinions on this subject". Ok. Your point being?

Matt

2024-02-16 12:31:41 +0000 UTC

I am up to the section where Sam raises the 'unarguable' example of the mass killing of civilians by the Allies during WW2 and the subsequent behaviour of the allies once WW2 was over. I am genuinely baffled by Sam's argument, which seems to be that the massive suffering inflicted on the civilians of Gaza by Israel is somehow different in moral quality because Israel doesn't 'want' to hurt take civilian lives and because Israel's political values are closer to Western liberal democracy than Hamas's values. Firstly, why do modern-day citizens of Allied countries have to agree with every decision of the Allied powers during WW2? In truth, I actually don't know enough about the history to form a view, but my starting assumption is that a military act that results in mass civilian deaths is unjustified - whether that is an act of my own country, or an enemy state. I might then shift from that assumption when I know more - for example, if the deaths were genuinely unforeseeable, or necessary to prevent greater suffering. And by 'necessary', I don't just mean 'strategically helpful' - I mean something exceptional. I mean the highest of high bars. I mean a decision made carefully with profound seriousness and profound sadness. I mean taking moral responsibility by taking every option available to reduce civilian suffering and then taking moral responsibility some more by providing ongoing support to survivors. Call me idealistic and naive but that is the world I want to live in so that is what I am going to stand for. Secondly, Sam Harris, I wish I could ask you this: Do people hurt less when they're dying at the hands of a power that doesn't actively want to harm them? Is there something about a missile from a 'good' country that affects the human nervous system differently? Does it hurt less to be riddled with bullets if you are governed by terrorists than democrats? If you voted for terrorists rather than democrats? Why do I have to care about intent to harm civilans here? What matters is that civilians are being harmed, horribly, on a mass scale. And I will start from the position that that is wrong and barbaric, and insist on being convinced that it is absolutely necessary. And I am not hearing much convincing from Sam here. For the record, I made this argument to pro-Palestinian supporters who said I 'had to understand' Hamas's motivations too.

Artemis Green

2024-02-16 07:16:32 +0000 UTC

also, just to be clear, I'm not saying this type of realization is THE truth or even A truth, but whenever I hear you (and sometimes Sam quite frankly) talk about what you think it is, it's like “that sounds literally almost NOTHING (well, very little, to remove any hyperbole) like what I think the realization is”… my intention is/was to basically spell out my understanding of it and you can personally determine (by just living your life really) whether it's either THE truth, A truth, or some internet rando psuedo-Buddhist nonsense something-or-other 😂 Also, sorry to tie you up, if I am… I'm personally looking forward to the Sam video too… so yeah, ignore my dumb ass until you finish what you need to do, haha

Empty_Cognizance

2024-02-16 06:04:44 +0000 UTC

Agree! It's such a rich privileged thing to be able to do. All it proves is how much money you have. Over here in the real world I couldn't even take 3 months off work when I was recovering from major surgery. It's like rich kids who think they are smarter than other kids because they play 3 instruments or something rather than acknowledging that their parents gifted them that skill set with all their money.

Emma

2024-02-16 04:08:20 +0000 UTC

Also, I wasn't really trying to be snarky with the original “at least intellectually” comment… I mean, I've heard vipassana people who've been practicing for fucking DECADES who seem to be missing a glaring fundamental thing, but again it could be a Dzogchen-derived delusion of course… but I truly don't think so, but then again THEY'D say that about someone else, heh

Empty_Cognizance

2024-02-16 03:13:30 +0000 UTC

wow, thanks for the non-notification Patreon, haha (sorry, JUST saw this)… I'm not really sure what to ask next, but I'm kinda curious if you could almost like “verbatim spell out” what you think is going on in, for example, the mind of Sam or whoever (ME 😂) when they think they're seeing “whatever”… though, I'm not sure if that's too directionless a request

Empty_Cognizance

2024-02-16 03:09:40 +0000 UTC

Aye, aye. I'm just confirming that my views on Buddhism are largely independent of Sam. I think his stance is much more of a symptom of a more general phenomenon.

Christopher Kavanagh

2024-02-16 02:42:48 +0000 UTC

Plus, I DID specifically say you WOULD HAVE BEEN acquainted with these things already, which you just confirmed

Empty_Cognizance

2024-02-16 02:40:16 +0000 UTC

Yeah, but I haven't said anything yet 😂 And also, I'm genuinely doing this in the least combative way I can think to do it… to me, this is just a simple back and forth, or would be at least… just stupid meditation shit really… if you're not interested, no biggie, there's a trillion other things to pay attention to in this world

Empty_Cognizance

2024-02-16 02:28:31 +0000 UTC

It might be disappointing but none of that is particularly new to me and it does sound a lot like the standard debates/chatter you hear amongst Buddhist converts/modernists when discussing their favoured introspective tradition. I don't think Dzogchen is particularly unique in its approach, insofar as all Buddhists traditions have different emphasises. I just see it as a lineage in Tibetan Buddhism that has proven quite popular in the West. I imagine that you will find this an overly intellectualised response that does not take account of the fundamental insights that the tradition offers... and maybe that is right. In any case, as a random aside, I studied Classical Tibetan at the start of my undergraduate studies.

Christopher Kavanagh

2024-02-16 02:25:16 +0000 UTC

yeah, I do not like this guy

Matt

2024-02-15 23:07:55 +0000 UTC

Do you get the impression that Sam just might be a little naive, having been raised in the lap of luxury and largely shielded from the street level BS that most of us aren’t? I used to be a lot more trusting until experience taught me to be more careful. Maybe Sam doesn’t have a lot of experience with lying scumbags like Bret W.

Michael

2024-02-15 21:57:11 +0000 UTC

And the second point about Hamas hiding their genocidal goals… Sam’s argument is that these goals are broadly supported and celebrated and thus do not need to be hidden… and yet they routinely are. If killing infidels enables you to attain paradise and is promoted by your religious ideology, what does it matter what the rest of the world thinks? As Sam explains if you take such convictions seriously then you are dealing with a rather distinctive motivation that is very different from one that is focused on extracting political concessions or nation building. In my model of Hamas, there is a mixture of religious fanaticism, political grievance, politicking, and self interest. Their actions are entirely consistent with this image. Alternatively, Sam’s presentation of them and their supporters as primarily being motivated by belief in paradise does not fit well with a lot of what they say and do.

Christopher Kavanagh

2024-02-15 21:55:46 +0000 UTC

The point with the charter is that Sam has argued 1) that people routinely ignore what extremists say in their material but they should not as it reflects their actual ideology and 2) that Hamas does not hide its antisemitism because it is part of its appeal. The logic extension of these points would mean that Hamas producing a more moderate charter that is more political and less virulently antisemitic would suggest that their stance is more political and less virulently anti semitic. It’s not my position that you have to take what extremists say in their material about their motivations at face value, that was Sam’s position. My point is Sam is inconsistent. He suggests we take extremists at their word when they invoke religious justifications but be skeptical when they invoke political goals. Hamas’ charter isn’t a treaty and it uses strategic ambiguity when it comes to Israel. They make broad claims about the Palestinian territory but they also signal a willingness to accept borders from 1967… borders with whom? The key argument against Sam’s position though would be that the charter explicitly states it is not a religious conflict. Again, it’s Sam who has an issue here. He is the one who says you have to heed what extremists tell you about their motivations and Hamas… in their charter are explicitly saying their primary motivation is not a religious conflict. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Christopher Kavanagh

2024-02-15 21:44:35 +0000 UTC

I've seen you comment on here about mindfulness/meditation before, so I'm assuming you've done at least a small bit of sitting practice before; not a huge deal though, since this is part of basic, fundamental experience of the world already anyway; which is the grounds of integration into normal life, rather than the typical “it must be doing SOMETHING in there 🤷‍♂️” because “shamatha is relaxing and must have all these benefits, so therefore something something”. But before diving into minute detail too heavily, and taking the above as a basic premise, would you agree that as far as you can tell from your own personal experience of “being mindful”/“trying to concentrate”/“trying to pay attention” and finding it difficult (or nearly impossible) to do sometimes and other times not, would you still say that, despite the difficulty of the obstruction of thinking and emotion, it IS indeed an “activity” (if only mental, but whatever) that one has endeavored to do, ie. mindfulness is at least some “nominal” thing you have engaged in and could engage in… like, as a thing at all… that is, mindfulness is something that you have indeed done AT ALL before, right? Sitting and following breath is a thing one could do, and you have indeed done this before, pretty much in a fundamentally similar way (of just being a thing one could do at all, really) to the way that one could literally engage in ANY OTHER ACTIVITY IN THE WORLD (“now I'm taking a shower, now I'm talking with someone on the phone, now I'm doing my little hobby of following breath, now I'm driving, now I'm cooking, etc.)? Basically, all I'm asking is simply: you've tried to follow breath before, probably found it difficult to do for any real sustained stretch of time, but then were able to do it again, right? Basically the “ubiquitous meditator's lament” of “… man I suck at meditation… I can do it for a really short bit, but then I lose it again, and…” dadada, so on and so forth?

Empty_Cognizance

2024-02-15 21:31:46 +0000 UTC

I have actually listened to the second half of this episode several times now and put certain conversations and statements on repeat because the subject interests me. I needed to process Sam’s verbose style and his large vocabulary. I also needed to understand both arguments fully. As someone who is usually on who has listened to a LOT of DTG (I consider myself a big fan), I am usually on Matt and Chris’ side. But this time I actually side with Sam on many of his statements. Not all but many. And I am stuck on some of the things that Chris said. For instance, Chris brought up Hamas’ updated treaty and how it eliminated anti-semetic statements. And said, doesn’t that contradict the notion that their motivations are purely about extreme religious fanaticism? I think Sam’s rebuttal was very good. First of all, he isn’t saying that their motivations are purely religious fanaticism. He’s saying that religious fanaticism (particularly Jihadism) is a huge factor to take into consideration and it tips the scale on the Palestinian side. Second, there is the concern of safety and whether or not Israel should trust the treaty. A big concern about the newer treaty was that Hamas was not only evasive about how they view the final borders of Palestine, but on top of that, they never denounced their call for Israel’s destruction. If you actually read the treaty, it explicitly denys Israel’s right to exist. So when Sam says, I think I have a right to mistrust Hamas and the new treaty, I get it. The thing is, I think Chris that your point is moot. Like, why even bring up the treaty as if it were a factor? The new treaty proves that Hamas’ motivations are not solely religious? Sam never said that their motivations were solely religious. There’s another part that I wanna mention. Chris says, why would Hamas hide behind conspiracies if their goal is to kill everyone that doesn’t believe in Islam? Why don’t they just outright say it? The answer to that is, because if they did, then the rest if the world would definately not support them. They have to be savvy and tactical if they want support from the rest of the world. Anyway, I as I said I am a big fan of this show but one of the reasons I am a fan is because I like to hear other sides debated. So I am open to even debating against you, yes you Matt or Chris if I think your arguments are not as strong as your “opponent” (for lack of a better word). And you have hilariously demonstrated your ability to have the piss taken out of you when you read those negative reviews at the end of your episodes. Anyway, this isn’t really me taking the piss out of you. This is me just saying how I see it.

Amy S

2024-02-15 20:24:53 +0000 UTC

That’s why we haven’t made any edits to Sam. Just the usual edits to us but it’ll be fixed up in the release.

Christopher Kavanagh

2024-02-15 19:51:49 +0000 UTC

Chris for sure go with the original. If Sam were to decide that you were editing the words to “mislead” the audience he would never shut up about it. He’d be telling his great-grandchildren that story.

Christopher McLaughlin

2024-02-15 19:07:36 +0000 UTC

I highly doubt Murray would entertain the idea. He is completely, utterly, incapable of seeing any side to an issue other than his own. He always falls back on ad hominem attacks, or similar rhetorical tactics, when criticised in a way that he can't easily counter with a coherent point of his own. I would love to see his reaction to a perceived 'friend' actually take him to task on an issue though. Though I imagine it would be the same sneer he always makes.

Matt

2024-02-15 16:09:14 +0000 UTC

Something that bothers me about his comparison of the optic blind spot with the non-self revelation is that I can learn about the optic blind spot by reading about it or listening to people who have studied the eye. There is physiological evidence one can point to. I don’t have to experience it myself to know it is true. The non self, apparently, can only be experienced. Anyway, I may be being obtuse on this subject. I am actually quite interested in the non self concept, but I want evidence that does not rely only on a person’s subjective experience to be convinced.

Linda Sears

2024-02-15 13:53:36 +0000 UTC

Yep, fair play to all involved. Chris for raising some good points about both lab leak and Harris's one-eyed take on Israel-Palestine, Matt for battling to move the discussion along when Harris was on his soap-box, but also there was some hope where Harris acknowledged that Anne Applebaum might be a good counter to Douglas Murray's stance on Hungary. That was one of the few times when Harris seemed to genuinely warm to an idea that wasn't his own. Instead of simply saying, "Hey, how can I discuss Hungary with Murray when I don't know about Hungary?" he seemed to realize that falling back on his professed ignorance of a topic wasn't the best or only thing available to him. That said, I wonder if Murray would actually take up the offer. I don't expect he would want his trips to Hungary to be held up to any genuine scrutiny. Aside from that, although Harris accepted that there were some questions he could have asked Alina Chan and Matt Ridley if he had listened to the podcast with Holmes, Worobey and Andersen, I am pretty sure he won't revisit the topic.

Robert Andrews

2024-02-15 12:40:20 +0000 UTC

He bombed Iraq for oil. Is that much better? Honestly don't know why it matters anyway, like Madeleine Albright said in 1996, even if sanctions led to the deaths of 500,000 children dying - "it was worth the cost" According to Sam, we should discuss Albrights intentions and compare it to Saddam's and ask what each would do the the "magic button"

Farah

2024-02-15 02:43:03 +0000 UTC

Totally agree. He takes forever to make a point and is incredibly verbose when doing so. Half the time the points he's making are not that complicated...

Liam McMahon

2024-02-15 02:39:33 +0000 UTC

Matt did a great job trying to reign in the verbose Harris. Yes, Sam, you made your point. But you have no reply to Matt’s much more concisely stated rejoinder. Good job Matt. And good job Sam for showing up and joining the conversation in good faith.

Kgar

2024-02-15 02:00:17 +0000 UTC

Like some other listeners have said, it was a difficult episode to get through. It was respectful that he returned and acknowledged how you interviewed actual scientists and experts. But he got annoyed at the end and sounded defensive. When he kept saying that Muslims and Islamists were radical and wanted violence, I was offended having Muslim friends of my own who are peaceful and good Americans. Muslims are different from Hamas, just like all Palestinians are not Hamas. Comparing these things to a speed limit was quite insulting. Thank you for continuing the hard work and making us all think a little harder and learn more vocabulary.

Chandra Collins

2024-02-15 01:41:09 +0000 UTC

Well he certainly acts like a ‘self’ or as we say in Ireland a ‘me feiner’

Liam

2024-02-15 00:31:22 +0000 UTC

And I have to say his talk about meditation retreats is inadvertently revealing. He has the luxurious ability to spend 3 months at a silent retreat, twice, and also do shorter stints even more times. My dad did a retreat for 10 days and thought it was a waste of time, and this is a Nepali man who constantly tries to get me to read the Dhammapada, who routinely tells me that all western ontology is derivative of ancient Hindu and Buddhist ontology. Coupled with your original mini decoding of Sam, the "I have no tribe" episode, it feels like Sam is implying that one cannot understand him or engage with his ideas unless one spends several weeks at a silent retreat.

Subodh Kafle

2024-02-14 23:41:22 +0000 UTC

This was one of the hardest episodes to get through tbh. The first section about self was so tedious. I quite enjoy hearing different perspectives on the self, to the extent that I enjoy learning about lacanian ideas. But Sam just has a way of expressing things that just grates. The Tiger Woods comparison was hilarious, he probably didn't mean it that way but it just comes across as "I am one of the greatest meditators ever and you should accept I know more than you." The analogy is bizarre as well, if you see Tiger making a ridiculous hole in one, you've seen it. If you hear Sam telling you something wild about the self based on his experience with meditation, well you've just heard someone claim something.

Subodh Kafle

2024-02-14 23:36:21 +0000 UTC

Is it possible that the loving eyes thing was meant as a joke? If in earnest, it's insane. But my first instinct on hearing it was that's Huberman being whimsical. I could be wrong. I've never consumed any of his content.

S.H

2024-02-14 23:23:05 +0000 UTC

I don't think I've ever heard Sam acknowledge a goot point that he hadn't already considered.

Ben Childs

2024-02-14 22:45:58 +0000 UTC

A moral choice is a choice between two bad options. Dick Cheney is a scumbag, but he did not bomb Iraq with the intention of killing as many Iraqi civilians as possible. I believe that is the difference Sam is making.

Michael

2024-02-14 22:03:21 +0000 UTC

Do you have a lot of experience with religious folks? I find that across the board, intensity of devotion tracks with truculence.

Michael

2024-02-14 21:58:49 +0000 UTC

You are not necessarily setting up someone to discover a predetermined conclusion. You can question that, but it isn’t a given. Regardless, Sam didn’t invent any of this stuff. What Sam is essentially describing is one-pointed consciousness, which is not unique to Buddhism. I am not a religious scholar, but it seems to me that most spiritual programs contain rituals and techniques for dissolving the ego, whether through meditation, prayer, fasting, self-flagellation, etc. Unfortunately, there is little consensus of what consciousness is, so any discussion of a particular aspect of consciousness is going to be hard, since there is no way for any person to communicate any experience of consciousness to another in a way that the listener can understand, unless they’ve had a similar experience. Accurate communication is only possible between equals. It should be said that what Sam is doing is generally frowned upon in traditional meditation circles, for the reason you’ve given - it is best to discover it on your own, but also, one sounds like a fool babbling on about illusory selves.

Michael

2024-02-14 21:44:01 +0000 UTC

Phew! I thought it might have been the DISC trying to censor you

Jeremy Stewart

2024-02-14 21:40:31 +0000 UTC

Yeah that was me trying to fix some audio artefacts and/or clarifying words with an option in the editing software. Sounds weird so I’ll probably just put up with the original or see if an actual editor can do something better.

Christopher Kavanagh

2024-02-14 21:34:42 +0000 UTC

As someone who’s listened to Sam for over 15 years, I think even Sam would agree he went off the rails over the discussion of the Gaza War. I read that Sam thinks that Israel, instead of going to war in the manner they have, should have used an antiterrorism strategy including targeted killings of Hamas leaders. Zack Beauchamp at Vox has written on the subject if anyone is interested in reading more about what that strategy would look like. I broadly agree with Sam about this, but we heard nothing of the sort in this podcast. Instead he sounded deranged assuming that Chris and Matt were trying to make some moral equivalence which they were in no way making. What we were left with was this random smattering of thoughts on the subject that a person listening in good faith could reasonably find morally repugnant. If Sam is going to riff on something pertaining to the ongoing killings in war of thousands of civilians he should be better prepared.

Christopher McLaughlin

2024-02-14 20:47:34 +0000 UTC

Assuming he actually believes his own hysterical rhetoric, I just assume he has literally zero personal experience and relies entirely on second hand information from Murray.

332

2024-02-14 17:38:14 +0000 UTC

As someone that lives in the UK and regularly visits london I find it so funny - its so demonstrably false that you wonder why he makes such claims. Does he think nobody in London will hear what he's saying and contest it? Does he think that everyone who does contest it is lying? Such a hysterical claim to be making.

Daniel Richards

2024-02-14 17:10:50 +0000 UTC

All I can say is that I looked at my computer with thanking eyes when I heard Chris do the Scooby-Doo voice.

JustTheWorstEver

2024-02-14 16:58:46 +0000 UTC

Nothing has damaged my respect for Sam more than hearing him in conversation with people he feels wronged by. If all I ever heard from him was his lectures and solo podcast episodes, I might have remained a fan of his for longer.

JustTheWorstEver

2024-02-14 16:57:56 +0000 UTC

The fact that's he's even pause-able is stunning.

Ymirsdreams

2024-02-14 15:22:32 +0000 UTC

His definition of ethnic cleansing being "two groups don't get along and one of them moves away" made me laugh out loud.

332

2024-02-14 15:22:14 +0000 UTC

Thank you re: Atman. It's always a distinction that makes my gums itch. I think this confuddlement lies with Dr Suzuki's (miss?)use of Freudian terms.

Ymirsdreams

2024-02-14 15:17:07 +0000 UTC

It seems Sam isn't across Sufism or Hassidism, either. There are many similarities with the forms of secular Buddhism he loves. I'm not sure he's ever seen gay pride in London either. The islamist plot takes a day off at least once a year, that's for sure.

Ymirsdreams

2024-02-14 15:13:54 +0000 UTC

I believe Sam is wrong when he says that “we don’t know” what evidence the Dept of Energy/FBI is basing its Covid origins conclusions (with low/mid level of confidence). Congress required the Intelligence Community, including these departments, to reveal the basis for their conclusions. That basis was revealed in a report that was published last year. It appears that that the only positive evidence in favor of lab leak was based on innuendo and the report as much states that. Several claims about sick workers, etc. were debunked by the report itself. Despite belly aching from the lab leak community, I don’t know of any serious challenges to the report, whether by Congress, or in a lawsuit. I don’t think there is any reason to believe that the DOE/FBI withheld any key evidence, which would be contravening the law. It doesn’t sound like Sam read or took into account the report, which is short and accessible.

Maytree

2024-02-14 15:12:06 +0000 UTC

Jesus christ, as a european that last segment makes him sound completely deranged. "London is lost"? Entirely detached from reality.

332

2024-02-14 15:09:20 +0000 UTC

I agree. They might have let him get a word in edgewise.

Ymirsdreams

2024-02-14 15:08:57 +0000 UTC

“All political intentions are singular, entirely knowable (by Sam) and, when formed by Western states, altruistic in the end” great framework for analysis 🙄

chuckboy

2024-02-14 14:04:27 +0000 UTC

Something dodgy going on with the audio here. First notices it at 01:11:00... its like the word jihadists was dubbed over after the recording. Noticed it a few more times after that

Jeremy Stewart

2024-02-14 13:55:07 +0000 UTC

Yes, maybe if he didn't insist on making the same point ad nauseum that everyone had already accepted there would have been more time left at the end.

Jeremy Stewart

2024-02-14 13:53:14 +0000 UTC

This is my fave comment so far. Just the sheer exhausting monologuing of it all. I genuinely hope he meditated after this.

Chris Clark

2024-02-14 09:59:23 +0000 UTC

Its kind of ironic how much his ‘jewish tribal identity’ shines through on his ideas regarding Palestine

Niels De Boer

2024-02-14 09:19:49 +0000 UTC

But yeah… hey, in the end it's just one more religious (or religion-adjacent) dumb thing for you to read and roll your eyes at, right? 🤓 Maybe not though, but yeah, maybe yeah too… but it's up to you if you want to. And also, as a caveat, this will all be very “my current understanding” obviously. But hey, “free”… but how many obtrusive free street flyers have you thrown out in your life already, you know? (3/3)

Empty_Cognizance

2024-02-14 09:00:27 +0000 UTC

Sadly, it truly is something that could be summarized in a handful of plain-ass sentences (despite the fact that, if you do agree to me saying words at you, it's going to be a lot more than that, just to resolve as much detail and prevent as much confusion as possible, without being TOO needlessly verbose about it hopefully. While I like Sam (at least on the “meditation front”) and think he has genuine realization of some degree, I feel the way of talking about this could be made a LOT more crystal clear, or at least less needlessly obtuse. It's weird with Sam: like, I like his window metaphor, where you'd normally be instructed to look out the window and you can comment on the rich display beyond the pane of glass, but if you look at the surface, you can see your face reflected, which had been there the whole time you were viewing the rich display beyond… but then his way of talking about the “agent looking out from behind the eyes, aiming attention, etc.” makes me facepalm and think “… Sam… I'm about 99.9% sure that when the majority of people hear you say that, they going to think you're referring to awareness as well as egoic mind, but then awareness is the WHOLE GODDAMN POINT OF THE TEACHINGS 😂 Like, you didn't just throw the baby out, you threw the fricking whole tub, maybe even the bathroom, heh. And then they're going to think the point is a ‘void’ of some sort or something, ‘but wait, I thought emptiness WASN'T a void’ and yada yada yada”. Honestly, whenever I hear him talk about this kind of thing, I'm always wondering whether he actually gets it fully or doesn't, because I hear evidence of both… but then he'll say something about “looking in a certain way”, which is effortful… but then he'll talk about effortlessness, and it's just like “🤦‍♂️ … Sam… please…” But then I can't tell if it's a “skillful means on a ‘whole internet’ scale” kind of tip-toe-y eggshell thing… (2/3)

Empty_Cognizance

2024-02-14 09:00:10 +0000 UTC

This is for Chris mainly, since he seems to have a genuine interest in these things: hopefully not to sound too arrogant, but I feel like I could help illustrate the “phenomenology” (or experience) of Dzogchen to you in a way that might(?) gel with your type of thinking more than whatever your tension-riddled interaction with Sam has (not 😂) yielded. I know you like to goof on the notion of the “mind-warrior facing the hard truths of reality that all the other ‘plebs’ just can't handle”, but I do have to issue somewhat of a word of warning: it TRULY is an absolutely mundane realization, despite a lot of unnecessarily flowery talk from Dzogchen practitioners themselves, which is then compounded by the fact that people hear other flowery “Buddhist-y” things from traditions that end up having not much to do with the final realization of Dzogchen, which leads them into thinking they’re the same tradition (because why on earth would they know), so therefore the thing “this guy” said would “also apply here”, and all that glorious type of confusing minutia horseshit. Which is really to say, I can't help but feel like it's going to take the wind out of the sails of whatever you could call your “current incarnation of life”, at least a little bit. I mean, you're probably not going to turn into this 180 degree whatever thing, but I don't know… maybe the little “personal asterisk” that “hovers” over the head of your wife and kid(s) might lose a little “specialness” or “heft in the footnote that it's referring to”, if you catch my meaning, but I'm assuming you're at least semi-aware of the possibility of this, given that you're acquainted with the terrain of these things, at least intellectually (though I know you've done certain meditative practices). (1/3… yes I know this isn't Twitter, this is more for ease of use or whatever, haha)

Empty_Cognizance

2024-02-14 08:59:31 +0000 UTC

He is a racist zionist. He views Palestinians as less deserving of life so all his intellectual masturbation should be viewed through that lens.

Niels De Boer

2024-02-14 08:46:10 +0000 UTC

He is certainly a man singing from his own hymn sheet (irony intended). I'm not sure Chris saying "the floor is yours" was a good idea on this occasion.

OR

2024-02-14 08:05:04 +0000 UTC

Chris is often told on Twitter that he has no restraint. But his ability to: A) Not bring up Tribalism & B) Not bite when Sam used the T word are very laudable. I did also love Matt’s repeated: ‘Yes, I think you’ve made your point there, Sam.’

john statham

2024-02-14 07:22:41 +0000 UTC

Also, it exposes Sam's arrogance that he was trying to explain what anthropologists think to Chris...who is an anthropologist.

Ben Godek

2024-02-14 05:04:47 +0000 UTC

I noticed that when the intentions of the leaders that committed the Communist atrocities came up, Sam had no issue dismissing their stated goal of creating a worker's paradise as being disingenuous. His heuristic is just that leaders of Western states can be trusted to have good intentions, but others can't.

Ben Godek

2024-02-14 04:57:06 +0000 UTC

To make this claim you’d need to show that academics studying extremism routinely fail to understand this. They don’t. Many of them have a lot more experience than Sam with fundamentalists.

Christopher Kavanagh

2024-02-14 03:57:06 +0000 UTC

I’m clearly in the minority here but I think a lot of these criticisms against Sam are reactionary and interpreting his words in bad faith. The debate is about the degree to which various factors affects what in the Israel-Pal war. I also do see his point about a lot of academically minded people not having the capacity to understand how differently they perceived the world from religious fundamentalist

Brian Petersen

2024-02-14 02:59:45 +0000 UTC

Fascinating conversation, thank you. My takeaway is ethnic cleansing is probably fine. Harris made forced relocation sound like a kind of no-fault divorce for peoples who have just decided they can't live together, which is fair. Unsure what to make of his adamantly hammering on the obvious point about intentional acts.

John Graham

2024-02-14 01:51:32 +0000 UTC

Yep, its pretty crazy right? Like I haven't listened to Harris in years because of his simplistic, shallow analysis and his bigotry. But even I was amazed to hear that he literally has not updated his talking points in decades. It was ditto the exact same crap he was spouting 10-15 years ago and it has not changed one bit. This is not remotely a "public intellectual" but a polemical ideologue stuck in the past. He is so convinced that he is right and that everyone else is wrong, woke and bad faith, that there is ZERO need to use more modern examples / thought experiments or apply nuance to his favourite talking points.

SHOUNAK SARKAR

2024-02-14 01:27:21 +0000 UTC

I just finished the whole episode. You both did admirably, and even though Sam failed to take your reasonable points seriously, I appreciated hearing them. It was good to learn that he found the settlements to be wrong- headed. The most distressing thing to me is that he doesn’t appear to understand that people can empathize with the plight of the people of Gaza and want their suffering to end while still being against the atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7th. It was also disturbing to find out he would make common cause with fundamentalist Christians if need be.

Linda Sears

2024-02-14 01:11:17 +0000 UTC

Many good points in the comments here, though I didn't find the interview that appalling, especially the first half. Sam clearly lost his cool when the topic of Israel was raised. He does tend to repeat his talking points... oh well, I still don,t find him as insufferable as many of you do and quite enjoy some the interviews on his podcast. Matt and Chris were great at letting Sam express himself and intersecting at opportune times.

Martin Pelchat

2024-02-14 01:05:01 +0000 UTC

Sam did do a lot of interrupting. That was off-putting. Interestingly though I did agree with many of his Israel points but his verbiage confused me throughout the whole interview. He uses confusing jargon and lofty language. I can’t always follow all of his points because I don’t understand what the heck he is saying. And it frustrates me because his tone is so calm, collected and seemingly clear that it’s deceptive. It’s as if someone is speaking gibberish with slow, clear, confident pronunciation. Also, I kept forgetting what the questions were because he kept carrying on and on.

Amy S

2024-02-14 00:54:46 +0000 UTC

It's frustrating, it seems like Sam would be so much better if he could calm down in these sorts of conversations, and just be willing to try to just say a few things instead of trying to get through as much as possible in a kind of unhinged charge manoeuvre. He's definitely capable of doing much better. One of the issues that really stood out to me, was how confused and random he sounded when trying to explain his position on meditation and the illusion of self. Isn't this his thing? Why isn't he extremely competent at explaining his position on this by now?

Jake

2024-02-13 23:54:50 +0000 UTC

But he looks into his miiiiiiind…what does he fiiiiiind. A tribe of Sam Harris clones?

Chris Clark

2024-02-13 23:22:29 +0000 UTC

“Self hypnosis through monologue” that’s brill ha 🤓

Chris Clark

2024-02-13 23:19:12 +0000 UTC

Wasn't as frustrating as I thought would be until it got to the Palestine/Israel issue. He is blinded by his hate for Islam as a whole on this. Like that attitude will help anything. It's clear he sees all Palestinians as jhiadists even though he attempts to differentiate to look fair, however, he slipped up several times when he was referencing Hamas and said Palestinians and same goes for jhiadists vs Islamists. He fails to see the social and cultural drivers beyond just belief systems. In any meaningful way anyway. Basically his solution for Israel is to ethically cleanse or oppress forever. Likely driving more ppl into he arms of jhiadism. Also, he's as bad as Lex wanking over Elon when it comes to Charles Murray. Whos accent makes his stupid opinions sound smarter than they are to Americans.

Lys

2024-02-13 23:07:14 +0000 UTC

I mean no one ever hides their intentions- people wouldn’t do that. 😶

Brainbiter

2024-02-13 21:01:59 +0000 UTC

Yeah but the request was not to press Alina and Matt… it was to consult relevant experts if you have a whole bunch of questions for them that you think they cannot answer. They did answer all of them.

Christopher Kavanagh

2024-02-13 20:53:44 +0000 UTC

Only if it's not too much trouble. But since you two only have this project, and don't have other jobs or family, it should be no problem 😉

Jake Lawrence

2024-02-13 20:53:01 +0000 UTC

Any old school Sam-Harris-heads have heard him pontificate on the moral implications of auto accidents and speed limits literally dozens of times. It appears his perfectly normal brain has attached his favorite thought experiment to the Gaza War to create quite a grim analogy. Lets spell out what Sam said: We could lower the speed limit and save tens of thousands of lives but because “it would be so boring and not worth the economic costs” we won’t and we’re not monsters. So the analogy is that the Israeli government could conduct the Gaza War in a way that could save the lives of tens of thousands of civilians but they’ve got their reasons for conducting the war the way they have and they’re not monsters despite inflicting monstrous death and destruction. Anyone else see any problems with this analogy?

Christopher McLaughlin

2024-02-13 20:52:41 +0000 UTC

Could output one but maybe when main episode releases.

Christopher Kavanagh

2024-02-13 20:49:58 +0000 UTC

Demented. Exactly same talking points and analogies for years. Sad to say has never grown mainly as can never admit he’s been genuinely wrong about anything. Comments on ethnic cleansing and Gaza just bizarre to the point hard to believe if I heard correctly. He’s losing relevance in the discourse on all sides , which would be almost admirable under different circumstances. I see he had a Massive rant ( again) on his recent podcast - against Rory Stewart who schooled him on culture and history and hilariously accurately described Sam’s Jihad obsession on his own podcast with Humza Yousaf. (And got Celtic a mention on Sam’s podcast…) Hope Stewart’s politeness doesn’t mean he backs down. Then he reacted to Musk, ( while saying he agreed with him) Then Kisin- while still saying what a smart guy Kisin is -everyone misunderstands Sam 😶, everyone… Finally- this is not a man who’s near enlightenment. Has only this week realised just ignoring everything says about him online ( time no. 5400) might be a good idea. Compare his unbelievable lack of equanimity to that of Joseph Goldstein his old mentor. Real shame that he just hasn’t grown or become wise in his old age. Don’t think we need to hear that again..

Brainbiter

2024-02-13 20:44:56 +0000 UTC

I guess he would have needed to know about the experts before recording his own episode, in order to do something different?

Roland Weber

2024-02-13 20:04:11 +0000 UTC

I felt bad for Matt as he was repeatedly trying to get his own points in while Sam steamrolled his way through

Jamison Shipley

2024-02-13 19:45:03 +0000 UTC

a moderator would definitely be needed. at least you didnt say he was close to the populist tribe

Jamison Shipley

2024-02-13 19:37:32 +0000 UTC

Sam’s bad heuristics are driving me crazy. I can’t abide his assumption that we know the pure intent of the leaders of any given aggressor state (ie Dick Cheney was so pure of heart, all he was seeking was a middle eastern Oklahoma) and I’m screaming at the phone with his invocation of MLK. How did that peaceful protest work out for the Black folks of the USA? I would hardly say our pluralism has been peacefully resolved. Don’t usually comment but this one has me in a bit of a tizzy.

chuckboy

2024-02-13 19:03:09 +0000 UTC

Squirming in my seat listening to this and muttering and squawking out loud. I work with my hands not my brain or words so I lack the skill to articulate the level of ick I feel about the ingenuousness I am sensing (not on the part of Matt and Chris…) body count doesn’t matter? The nonsense breakdown of selfhood. Wtf? Does Sam Harris get a higher score on the gur-ometer after this performance?

Nell Van Vorst

2024-02-13 18:46:33 +0000 UTC

Thank you for sharing the additional resources, especially the NY Mag article.

Kerena

2024-02-13 18:36:25 +0000 UTC

Sam has the thinnest skin! I hate the way he bulldozes his points through. All he has to do is acknowledge 1) the amount subjectivity of the meditation experience, 2) his overemphasis on islamic jihadism, and 3) his association with people who are friendly to right wing populists. SIMPLE. Matt's point about the asymmetry between the israelis and palestinians causing the latter to resort to terrorist tactics is an excellent one that Sam could have easily acknowledged to make himself appear less extreme.

Jamison Shipley

2024-02-13 18:28:07 +0000 UTC

Well I guess if Evan Thompson couldn't get anywhere regarding the "no self" debate it's not gonna be easy. Sam's meditation manifests as more a form of self hypnosis through monologue. I wish he was a bit more curious about your points.

Sam Leeming

2024-02-13 18:18:48 +0000 UTC

I just finished the episode. My last statement is: Sam, what the fuck, man.

Jake Lawrence

2024-02-13 17:49:03 +0000 UTC

So the people who founded Israel murdered about 10,000 (maybe 15,000) innocent civilians circa 1947 - 1949, their motivation was to create a Jewish majority in Palestine. I really don't get the moral argument that it's OK for Zionists to do that but not OK for people of other religions. In fact, I agree you have to be a moral monster to make that argument like Sam does. Killing 10,000 innocent civilians for a racist reason is immoral regardless of who does it. Interestingly, there is a credible eyewitness report of Zionist militia members throwing a Palestinian baby into an oven at Deir Yassein (Deir Yassein was mentioned in your linked NY Magazine article). However, it also buys the Israeli atrocity propaganda. Yes, Hamas committed atrocities, killed civilians, took civilians hostage. They didn't burn them, and there's no good evidence they tortured people in front of their families before killing them. The evidence of widespread rapes is thin at best. All those burned people in cars? The IDF fired on those cars, they destroyed houses with tank fire in the kibbutzes, all to prevent hostage taking. This is well documented. It's unknown, really, how many of the 800+ Israeli civilians were actually killed by so-called friendly fire, but no doubt a substantial proportion. I really think you guys fail to understand the level of atrocity propaganda put out by Israel. A few weeks ago, the NY Times had an article accusing Hamas of weaponizing rape. They lead with a victim by the name of Gal Abdush, who was presented as having been raped. But Gal Abdush was not raped according to her family. Her husband was on the phone to his brother immediately after the strike that killed her, and he told his brother they killed Gal. She was not raped. She died tragically and horribly, one hopes she didn't suffer, but she wasn't raped. So one had to ask, who is feeding the NY Times all these atrocity stories, and shouldn't one take a really hard look at the other allegations? One side in the conflict is committing genocide, that side is Israel. There are good arguments that their 1948 murder of 10,000+ civilians was also an act of genocide, and certainly Israel has committed many genocidal acts since. Sam is a moral monster.

Kat

2024-02-13 17:38:13 +0000 UTC

This was so weird. 'Anger is fleeting', 'the ego is an illusion', 'there is no subject, just experience' blah blah ... V ..... 'I have this notion about Islam and I am going to let it warp all my opinions about conflict in the Middle East in a completely biased and simplistic way'. Sam seems certain that a belief in paradise acts like a computer virus. What about the belief that other people believe in paradise and that they have been consumed by a virus and you can't reason with them Sam? Is that a virus? And what about the virus that believes that only you and Douglas Murray are thinking clearly and everyone else isn't because that have an ego virus, Sam? That is a particularly nasty virus. Poor Sam.

Nina Davies

2024-02-13 17:22:06 +0000 UTC

Sam's rhetoric is a powerful argument against the power of insight meditation.

Jesse Rimler

2024-02-13 17:16:26 +0000 UTC

Sam at the end talking about how you might need to ally yourself with unsavory people if things get bad enough and how only fundamentalist Christians really understand his ideas about the motivation of the people he doesn't like... is it time for Sam to become James Lindsay 2.0?

Jenson

2024-02-13 17:09:46 +0000 UTC

When it comes to Israel, it's hard to hear him as anything other than, at heart, a right-wing racist. Sam made unsupportable essentialist claims about human nature and religion, faced reasonable criticism, and instead of refining his points, he has angrily doubled down on them to the point that he now claims Douglas Murray as an inspirational figure.

Jesse Rimler

2024-02-13 16:57:59 +0000 UTC

Thank you.

Kerena

2024-02-13 16:39:39 +0000 UTC

This guy makes me never want to meditate again!

Kerena

2024-02-13 16:36:47 +0000 UTC

This conversation convinced me to stop listening to Sam's opinions, full stop. First he came off as kind of clueless on the lab leak. Then, when he was talking about the self and mindfulness, he just delivered his talking points without interacting with Chris and Matt's points. Then they move onto the Israel-Palestine conflict and it gets so much worse! His positions there are truly morally hideous.

Ben Godek

2024-02-13 16:30:32 +0000 UTC

I think Sam is getting worse and worse. To me the real service this discussion provides is that when he says shit like "London is ruined" and 'you really have to ignore the dead Palestinian children being pulled out of the rubble' (the author of the Moral Landscape everyone) it gives you these rare mask-off moments that truly reveal how much of a bog standard reactionary he is under the surface

Michael John

2024-02-13 16:23:12 +0000 UTC

He does not stop

Michael John

2024-02-13 16:17:51 +0000 UTC

It's like 90 percent Sam monologuing, often before Chris and Matt even have a chance to articulate their points. My fave was him interrupting and saying "I see where this is going, let me stop you tiny there and save you some time" then monologues breathlessly for thirty minutes straight on his own strawman interpretation of their criticism without allowing them to ever break in despite repeated attempts

Michael John

2024-02-13 16:17:17 +0000 UTC

It also insane that he authored a whole theory of morality based on minimizing objectively verifiable suffering of conscious beings ('the moral landscape') and doesn't even touch those moral concepts in his analysis of Israel's actions

Michael John

2024-02-13 16:12:15 +0000 UTC

Embrace the Void... oh, no, that's a different podcast.

Roland Weber

2024-02-13 15:25:55 +0000 UTC

Yes Sam motivation matters. So do 10,000 dead kids.

Christopher McLaughlin

2024-02-13 15:15:28 +0000 UTC

I think it’s a substantial point. Sam later said he meditated close to a year to achieve insights like that which every parent of a toddler knows. Sam has kids and presumably needed no meditation or psychedelics to realize anger is fleeting. I would have liked a longer extrapolation from DtG as to why that doesn’t reveal special objective knowledge

Adam Sher

2024-02-13 14:58:36 +0000 UTC

Lol well said! The podcast was a crazy listening journey for sure. It literally went from mindfulness & meditation to Fox News / Newsmax / Rush Limbaugh territory rather quickly.

SHOUNAK SARKAR

2024-02-13 14:10:12 +0000 UTC

Chris, Matt: any chance of a transcript?

Jake Lawrence

2024-02-13 14:01:01 +0000 UTC

Fair conclusion.

Christopher Kavanagh

2024-02-13 14:00:28 +0000 UTC

Agree! Although he is literally quite hard to make a point against as he just talks over Chris and Matt. He saw it as being given an opportunity to “browbeat” but he really just digs his own grave. I enjoyed (too strong a word maybe) the programming of the show where he gets to start sounding all chill and Zen and insightful about fleeting emotions, the importance of spending a year meditating 12 hours a day in silent retreat (who exactly has access to this kind of time investment btw) and in the end just sounds like a babbling, polemical talk show host with hot takes rather than a public intellectual with interesting balanced perspectives. If this is where mindfulness gets you I’m not sure I’m sold. And it is “sold”.

Chris Clark

2024-02-13 13:47:11 +0000 UTC

Something that confuses me, if you do not have an ego self, how can you try harder to discover you do not?

Linda Sears

2024-02-13 13:42:40 +0000 UTC

Hopefully this finally gets rid of the false conception that Harris is a “liberal”. He’s a reactionary and racist hysterical moron spouting Great Replacement talking points. I doubt if he’s actually been to London recently, he’s most likely getting all his views of Europe filtered through the ravings of hard-right deplorables like Douglas Murray, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and others etc. Harris is shown way too much charity and deference. And sincerely hope that he’s not invited back into the pod. Or if he is, Chris and Matt take a much bolder and more challenging approach.

SHOUNAK SARKAR

2024-02-13 13:34:10 +0000 UTC

The West is morally superior than...Islam? Because...the West has a good track record of medieval barbarism? 👀 I'm a little confused over here, Wes.

Jake Lawrence

2024-02-13 13:30:02 +0000 UTC

“London is ruined” 😂

Chris Clark

2024-02-13 13:22:34 +0000 UTC

I agree this is where the biggest distance is but even at that Sam might now even be leaning slightly less likely than 50-50 in favor of zoonotic origin (this isn't clear from the interview) which if this were the case, they're both on the same side and we're arguing at what point on the continuum we are. Joe Rogan is 1. Firmly on the other side of lab leak. 2. Sam's boring dog in this fight is that nobody should be accused of racism for thinking lab leak while Rogan's is the conspiracy of the lab leak.

Dr Badmouth

2024-02-13 13:21:57 +0000 UTC

Loved the slight repressed incredulous laughter of either Chris or Matt as Sam was praising Dougies extraordinary courage at this point. Don’t think he picked up on it.

Chris Clark

2024-02-13 13:19:14 +0000 UTC

“Douglas is living on the front line of that clash of civilisations in an extraordinarily brave way” I simply have no words for this. Has Sam ever been to the soon to be Islamic terrorist state aka UK? I’d like to meet him in London for a halloumi wrap if he’s up for it. It’s quite nice over here.

Chris Clark

2024-02-13 13:17:38 +0000 UTC

Excellent analysis! As a Sam Harris fan and subscriber, I think it is very accurate

Andreas Singer

2024-02-13 13:01:40 +0000 UTC

Yes. And weasel words from Sam as usual on “intentions” which he tried to leverage on Chompsky all those years back. He really does seem to have re-occurring enlightened thoughts! We bombed Iraq with good intentions and that counts. Dick Cheney would have turned Baghdad into Oklahoma. 🤔 Collateral damage is well intentioned. It’s not. He conflates “well intentioned” with callous, incurious indifference to human suffering. And he has been know to backflip on this, ie when he decides to ignore the “intentions” of far right figures such as Steve Bannon. I don’t care about his intentions, you have to just listen to the words he says, the ideas, the sense made. Which is that France is in danger of becoming an Islamic state because of migration.

Chris Clark

2024-02-13 12:44:13 +0000 UTC

He really gets to be Just A Little Guy whenever it suits him, huh?

Christy Kilgore

2024-02-13 12:31:55 +0000 UTC

Well, Douglas Murray is 'On the front lines'. Truly hes there in the mud, real boots on ground stuff.

Daniel Richards

2024-02-13 12:21:49 +0000 UTC

This is a tiny point but I’m so glad Matt said something when Sam was talking about needing training to realize anger is fleeting, as his illustration there is exactly what I would tell my children when they were very small. And I’ve never meditated once. My only conclusion? I am a transcendental genius.

Christy Kilgore

2024-02-13 12:10:38 +0000 UTC

So who’s up for a group booking to see Josh Szeps and Douglas Murray do something onstage in Oz in March?!?

elcid

2024-02-13 12:06:55 +0000 UTC

I haven't listened yet, but usually by medieval barbarism Sam means cruelty to women, LGBT, and heretics. (I might add sadistic halal slaughter.) On the whole, the west is indeed morally superior with respect to treatment of such groups.

Wes

2024-02-13 11:40:10 +0000 UTC

Well he has looked into Murray and simply concluded that you have to ally with Orban, Le Pen and Wilders to stop the great replacement and fight Islam in Europe lol! Murray is just a moderate don’t you see?

SHOUNAK SARKAR

2024-02-13 11:38:53 +0000 UTC

Man the ramparts and pick up arms! The brown hordes and barbarians are inside the gates.

SHOUNAK SARKAR

2024-02-13 11:00:24 +0000 UTC

Though I have come to the same conclusion as you to some level, I feel like that last statement is where it gets a bit dicey. If you tell someone there is a truth, that it can be discovered, it cannot be sufficiently explained, and you can only find out through doing this process - you are essentially setting the person up to 'discover' a conclusion you've essentially led them to, no matter how instructional and dogma free the steps to get there are. It is certainly a helpful tool, I think an issue for me is that you could essentially lead anyone to any number of conclusions using such framing, and Sam seems unable to sufficiently interact with the idea of it being anything other than objective reality - in doing so it feels to me quite dogmatic. I think if he took a step back from the claims he was making, and argued from the position of it being a framework, he would do better in convincing people of the use of it.

Daniel Richards

2024-02-13 10:53:45 +0000 UTC

To be fair, he would need a time machine to be able to do that - its simply impossible to vet guests ahead of an interview.

Daniel Richards

2024-02-13 10:50:45 +0000 UTC

Totally. And he seems oblivious to the irony-that his fixation on espousing this stuff entrenches him in patterns of re-occurring thought. He’s obliged to stick to a script for business/status/career reasons. Under the pretence of universal emancipation through mindfulness. The weak point is that yes, meditation can probably be quite helpful for some people. But he always go in so strong. It’s over-determined as a universal cure for everything. I also dislike the idea that it’s not for everyone-not because some people just find other ways of being more satisfying, but because not everyone is cut out for it. It’s slightly superior. It’s anti pluralistic, essentially.

Chris Clark

2024-02-13 10:39:32 +0000 UTC

Oh my where to start! First of all, it was extremely annoying how many times Harris interrupted and didn’t let Matt interject or Chris finish his point. And the many times he responded to criticisms by stating that the people with the critique are “confused”. It just speaks to Harris’ arrogance, ego, inability to take criticism and self-righteousness. Secondly, thank you guys for pushing him on Israel and Douglas Murray. It made it clear that Harris is a reactionary and holds old school, western supremacist views about clash of civilisations etc. He basically flat out said that the amount of dead Palestinian children didn’t matter because of “intentions”. I mean I am critical of Islam plus broadly sympathise with Jews and Israeli causes AND EVEN to me that was a reprehensible statement. He also negated & downplayed the harm caused by a hard-right government like Likud in power & the various associated extremists who have comments justifying even ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. No to Harris, everything is a result and consequence of Islam. Other people are acting disproportionately or badly? Well what can you do? They have to fight Islam! Thirdly the gall of him to say that Douglas Murray is just making strange bedfellows in his fight against Islam. His own party threw out his membership because of his extreme comments. And how many Muslims are there in Hungary btw? That he is compelled to fawn over and ally with Orban. Plus Harris made hysterical, crazy comments about London falling to Islam and repeated quasi Great Replacement talking points. And it’s unsurprising that his view of Europe is largely shaped by the hard-right perspectives of Murray and Ali. Also see how hard he went at the left while being more charitable to the right. He’s not a liberal guys, he’s right wing. Calling him a liberal is an insult to many moderate conservatives like Tom Nichols, Anne Applebaum, Stuart Stevens, Rick Wilson, Max Boot etc who are way more compassionate & way less extreme in their statements on similar geopolitical issues. Harris is a racist, reactionary bastard and I hope i don’t have to hear his voice ever on the podcast again. Peace out! And i haven’t even mentioned his other previous ignorant comments on British colonialism, Sati or a hundred other things.

SHOUNAK SARKAR

2024-02-13 10:39:19 +0000 UTC

Yes, I feel like he should look into some things a bit more...

Christopher Kavanagh

2024-02-13 10:34:44 +0000 UTC

Yup. The video is being edited for release with the podcast. It is funny in parts. particularly, Matt's expressions.

Christopher Kavanagh

2024-02-13 10:04:24 +0000 UTC

Sam "I haven't looked into it" Harris is always an interesting decoding to listen to. Cheers guys!

Farah

2024-02-13 10:04:03 +0000 UTC

Do you still intend to upload the video? I have to see Chris' expression hearing Harris in real-time repeat canned responses Chris has heard a hundred times before at 2x speed.

Brendan Smith

2024-02-13 10:03:21 +0000 UTC

How I understand the idea of the self as an illusion - I have an inner voice that says things like, “i’m hungry” or “why did I say that stupid thing”, etc. Who is that voice talking to? Who is the “I” being referred to then? Is there an implied listener? That voice is not active when I am engrossed by a film or a book or focused on a task. If the film is not engrossing or the task is somewhat mechanical, my “I” may return and my mind may begin to dwell on some hope or grievance. Through meditation, one is able to recognize the interplay between the endless monologue, emotions, physical sensations, the whole shebang of being. These internal, articulated thoughts arise out of nowhere and we react to them as if they were true. But it isn’t real. It is a narrative, and internal construct, an unreliable narrator. So if you are like myself and prone to rumination, this knowledge is a wonderful tool. You realize that rumination is not something being done to you, it is a process you are actively participating in, and it is not useful. When you are angry and lose control, you become better able to “drop” the rage, because you quickly become aware of what you are doing. It’s dicey because no amount of explanation can transmit the knowledge accurately. It’s like trying to explain how to play a melody.

Michael

2024-02-13 10:02:46 +0000 UTC

good point. I've taken that into consideration and it's tilted the scale considerably. Play a Beatles album tonight in thanks and prayer

Farah

2024-02-13 09:35:18 +0000 UTC

Well, we did create The Beatles.

Michael

2024-02-13 09:26:19 +0000 UTC

"it can't maintain its salience when you see dead children being pulled out of rubble, you have to rerun the argument" @1:42:14 does he hear himself? He can't maintain moral clarity and he has to brainwash himself into believing in the cause I wonder how nazi prison guard camps managed to carry out their actions. Did they also re-listen to Hitler speeches?

Farah

2024-02-13 08:55:25 +0000 UTC

I find it grating that he keeps saying 'look at the numbers!!!' when comparing Israel vs Palestinian. I mean isn't the glaring difference in the two sides the fact that hamas killed like 1000 people and Israel has now killed so many 10s of thousands of Palestinians that we've now lost track. I don't give a damn about their religious position. I just care how many people Israel has killed and the fact that it might be reaching a genocide!

Emma

2024-02-13 08:40:22 +0000 UTC

To be frank, I find phrases like "medieval barbarism" @1:13:00 to be really frustrating to hear from westerners. They drink their koolaid of the "enlightenment" and ignore that during that period these enlightened nations inflicted suffering on a magnitude that was not possible in the "barbaric" Middle ages Not to mention the legacy they left behind in places like the DRC still dealing with the consequences of arbitrarily drawn borders (which also afflicts the Middle East - arguably even more so) Sorry, had to get that off my chest. I just really abhor when westerners ignore historical contingencies and believe themselves to be morally superior with their western culture.

Farah

2024-02-13 08:24:06 +0000 UTC

Regarding point 2, the disagreement of something like a lab leak vs wet market leak is inherently going to be on a continuum Its very likely that even someone like Joe Rogan would permit the possibility of Covid being a wet market leak. Suddenly the disagreement with Joe also becomes one of degree, and not one of absolutes

Farah

2024-02-13 08:07:36 +0000 UTC

A Dan Carlin fan! He's very good. Agreed, listening is incredibly important and the way Sam goes into his verbal diarrhoea here, making little sense, just makes me think he loves the smell of his own farts.

OR

2024-02-13 08:06:16 +0000 UTC

I think the podcast space is largely self-selecting. Some exceptions, I'm impressed by someone like Dan Carlin (hardcore history / common sense) who seems to prefer listening to speaking!

Farah

2024-02-13 07:59:47 +0000 UTC

30 minutes in and I'm massively struggling. I know you have a 'right to reply' policy, but hearing Harris endlessly pontificate is almost too much for me. Like being hit over the head with a bag of oranges😂

LaserRange

2024-02-13 07:46:33 +0000 UTC

I don't think Sam (we're on a first name basis) has ever explicitly stated this, but a stream in his overarching philosophy appears to be that events are always driven by individuals and that individuals are always driven by their thoughts. Fix the thoughts, fix the individuals, fix the situation(s). It's interesting that he seems to hold that view given just how much evidence has accrued that thoughts appear to be part of our (human's) adaptive 'sense making' (shoutout) of our situations, whereby we tell ourselves a narrative to provide a past and a set of projections for possible outcomes rather than this 'computation' algorithm that can have 'bugs' in it. Basically, this seems to be a Buddhist-inspired quazi-metaphysical-religious commitment on his part.

Ymirsdreams

2024-02-13 07:21:28 +0000 UTC

Thank you.

AJ

2024-02-13 07:18:33 +0000 UTC

His insistence that the number of Palestinian children being murdered is meaningless was hard to stomach.

AJ

2024-02-13 07:13:26 +0000 UTC

His fixation with Islam is so fascinating. I don't think I'm super far off from his position on Palestine, probably a little bit more defensive of Israel than I would be. But I really don't get the focus on Jihadism as explaining the conflict. He's able to identify other factors, such as third-party countries in the middle east using Palestine as a tool to harm Israel and not to actually resolve the crisis, and yet he sticks on Jihadism. I really liked Chris' line of questioning bring up behavior of Hamas that doesn't align with the Jihadism narrative. Maybe it's just my lack of spirituality, but I think Islam is really not the major driving issue

Nick Brouwer

2024-02-13 06:58:43 +0000 UTC

Well said. Never mind the colonialism, land theft, stealing of resources and genocide that Western / European colonialists have done globally. All that was done with the best of intentions you see; they were ONLY trying to "civilise the savages". I have always said Harris is a bigot and his continuing friendship, fawning over Douglas Murray and repeating his talking points ad nauseam proves that.

SHOUNAK SARKAR

2024-02-13 06:43:59 +0000 UTC

He was saying he would have needed a time machine to have known about the experts in advance of our episode coming out, which he would not have needed, because I told him before that. ;)

Christopher Kavanagh

2024-02-13 05:46:01 +0000 UTC

God he’s awful! Really wish you hadn’t bothered

Simon Patience

2024-02-13 05:41:22 +0000 UTC

I thought Sam's time machine point was only that he couldn't go back in time and ask more critical questions in the Ridley and Chan interview based on what he subsequently learned from your virologists episode. Could be misremembering, but I don't think he was saying he would've needed a time machine to do a follow-up episode with the virologists for balance. Sam was probably uninterested in that because it'd undermine the point he had wanted to make about the left (allegedly) wrongly shutting down the lab leak hypothesis. Anyway, great conversation with someone who, as a famous debater, I'm sure is daunting to challenge.

Daniel

2024-02-13 05:41:12 +0000 UTC

Finished and not looking forward to the next Sam’s far-right to reply(but fuck you guys because I will listen😂). Might not have to worry all that much about that though, seeing as he will likely leave this mortal coil soon, from lack of oxygen from being stuck up his own ass.

Floatgoat.

2024-02-13 04:31:49 +0000 UTC

Protect Douglas Murray at all costs.

Christopher McLaughlin

2024-02-13 04:14:19 +0000 UTC

Oh snap…London has fallen!

Christopher McLaughlin

2024-02-13 04:12:38 +0000 UTC

His hand-waving of innocent Palestine’s being killed is sickening. His argument is basically 2 things can’t be true, plus hamas bad, so I guess the whole population is getting what’s coming to them. Also constantly pointing at extremist on the Israeli side as crazy outliers and then talk about the Palestinians as a monolith is fucking aggravating and disgusting.

Floatgoat.

2024-02-13 03:54:04 +0000 UTC

I do find it quite amusing that all the people who live for the discourse and having the hard discussions get a bit tetchy when a disagreement actually crops up.

Ryan Booker

2024-02-13 03:45:52 +0000 UTC

Well said my friend. When Sam gave us his Intro to Just War Theory explanation why civilian body count “isn’t the right way to think about it” I knew he didn’t have anything serious to say. May his children never be at the wrong end of a bombing campaign like the kids in Gaza.

Christopher McLaughlin

2024-02-13 03:08:50 +0000 UTC

I thought the conversation was actually mostly good? Quite Sam heavy, but that seems somewhat reasonable. Sam is understandably exercised by the Middle East. But even that seemed to go relatively well. It at least could have gone a lot worse. It’s clear he doesn’t really like push back too much. But I think it didn’t go off the rails and there was at least some acknowledgement of other factors. The end was a bit rushed and clear there is a better conversation there. But up until the end of the Middle East part it didn’t seem too bad…

Ryan Booker

2024-02-13 02:39:24 +0000 UTC

At 44:25 you can hear typing on a keyboard during one of Sam's monologues. Nice artistic touch

Trees

2024-02-13 02:09:41 +0000 UTC

It's rhetorical windmilling.

quirkformity

2024-02-13 01:50:57 +0000 UTC

Y’all need a respectively, please shut the fuck up for a second button for Sam😂. strategy seems to be, I’m going to cut you off to talk for 5 minutes straight. Damn, my man ramble. (I’m currently 50 minutes in, so perhaps he stops)

Floatgoat.

2024-02-13 01:41:26 +0000 UTC

The less Harris knows about a topic, the more unyielding his view.

quirkformity

2024-02-13 01:39:01 +0000 UTC

Greeeeeaaaat. Looking forward to it ha

Lys

2024-02-13 01:37:10 +0000 UTC

It must be exhausting to be Sam Harris.

quirkformity

2024-02-13 01:33:36 +0000 UTC

Yup, I think you're both understandably getting caught between playing gracious host and debate partner. That would work better. I still think your conversations with Sam are making him better at his job which is a good thing.

Dr Badmouth

2024-02-13 01:21:30 +0000 UTC

He made me want to pull out my hair.

Mike Nelson

2024-02-13 01:14:39 +0000 UTC

The fact that this is even plausible is stunning

Erik Fast

2024-02-13 01:13:26 +0000 UTC

But I didn’t hear anything bad from him afterwards and the mood was a lot better than last time I think.

Christopher Kavanagh

2024-02-13 00:57:46 +0000 UTC

TBH I feel like this is probably the nail on the coffin for episodes with us. I’d happily discuss other stuff with Sam but I’d really want it to be in some more of a debate style format. Maybe with Josh Szeps moderating or something.

Christopher Kavanagh

2024-02-13 00:56:52 +0000 UTC

Enjoyed the convo. Thx all

Riku

2024-02-13 00:51:56 +0000 UTC

As an ex Harris fan and somewhat user of waking up, I do feel like this conversation lifted the veil for me. Hearing him talking through the exact talking points he uses on his app - almost verbatim - feels so disingenuous when actually in conversation with people. Like I can accept there will be a script during meditative practises, but to bang it out in conversation (typically with very little bearing on the question asked) just felt incredibly aggravating. His idea that his framework is objective really does seem to make him unable to talk candidly about it - as if all he need do is give enough sales pitches and everyone will fall in. It's somewhat religious I feel.

Daniel Richards

2024-02-13 00:47:04 +0000 UTC

Oh, that is a better question. Haha, nvm. It happens. You had no choice but to forget it. Any insights into how Sam felt about the conversation? Would he entertain another episode. You'll eventually get really good at interrupting him back.

Dr Badmouth

2024-02-13 00:46:33 +0000 UTC

Just finished the episode. Sam was pretty aggressive in talking over you and hammering his points home, but maybe that's fair since you did a 3 hour episode on him. A few thoughts: I guess Sam never got the memo that the Self in not-Self (anatta) refers to Atman, the Upanishadic notion of self, which is more like an eternal disembodied soul. Going around telling Westerners that they don't have a self is like going around telling non-Christians that they don't have a soul; most of them never believed they had one in the first place. Maybe Sam thought he had an eternal unchanging self, and introspective practices helped him see through this, but that doesn't mean that everyone has the same experience by default or that this specifically Eastern way of looking at the self is intrinsic to consciousness. I'm broadly sympathetic to Israel so I probably agree with him on many points of policy, but I also think Sam has an irrational view of Middle Eastern politics where everything is filtered through his experience of 9/11. If we're going to take the religious beliefs of jihadists at face value (like Sam says we should), then we should also take the political grievances of the Palestinians at face value. He can't deny that they believe they have a right of return to the land that they lived on 80 years ago, and that the "transfer" of the Arab population and blocking of their return was always a core part of the Zionist project (see Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem). That has a lot more to do with demographics, politics, and national identity than religion. Sam seems to have a habit of taking a formative experience (meditation, 9/11, being canceled by the left) and believing that he has found the once and for all solution, and anyone who disagrees with him just isn't seeing the truth. It's not likely he's going to change his mind, because his entire identity is wrapped up in these topics and the positions he's taken on them.

Erik Fast

2024-02-13 00:42:53 +0000 UTC

I didn’t phrase my questions very well especially towards the end. A bit difficult because Sam had a habit of interrupting. The Douglas Murray example was just the one that came immediately to mind after the Israel discussion but I had better ones and more wanted to focus on Sam’s tendency to largely ignore the output of people he routinely collaborates with and praisesz

Christopher Kavanagh

2024-02-13 00:42:38 +0000 UTC

I'm interested in knowing what you were alluding to when you said you didn't do so well Chris especially after not bringing up tribalism?

Dr Badmouth

2024-02-13 00:39:47 +0000 UTC

I enjoyed this conversation. Sam speaks a little much and can be harder to interrupt but you guys can be a bit braver in your interruptions (I understand this is actually difficult but look to Josh Zepps who has mastered this art). Some of my feedback/observations. 1. Lab leak - Best moment is hearing Sam becoming more sceptical after listening to your episode. I'm not surprised he retreated to addressing the racism claims. It is both true and deeply uninteresting. 2. It did feel like you guys mostly disagreed on where you draw your individual line on a continuum. How much Islam is responsible for the Israel/Palestine conflict? How much lab leak is responsible? At what point are Sam's claim about subjectivity leaning into unverifiable claims? etc 3. I don't particularly care for Sam having to answer for Douglas Murray but if Sam hosts a pod with Anne Applebaum and Douglas, this endeavor would have been worth it. 4. I think Sam has benefited from this podcast. I think he has clarified some of his positions a little better. I think there were different questions you could have asked that may have gotten more concessions from Sam like you kind of did with the lab leak but I have the power of hindsight. Well done. Enjoyed. A fan of all parties.

Dr Badmouth

2024-02-13 00:38:15 +0000 UTC

Amen

Michael John

2024-02-13 00:21:26 +0000 UTC

Ok, ex-Muslim here, I heard Harris say at the end of the podcast that the ex-Muslim voices are valuable in this conversation. So here's my two cents. This guy is a monster. Did he really have the nerve to argue that Israel has the best of intentions during the opening stages of, at best, a mass ethnic cleansing campaign, or at worst, a genocide? Like, are we supposed to talk about how horrible Islam is sometimes while children are being bombed in refugee camps that are previously deemed safe by the perpetrators? Also, He literally knows nothing about Islam or the details of how the Islamists came to power in different countries. As bad as they are, the Islamists are nowhere near the unique monsters that he's making them out to be. Especially compared to other extremists. I'm puzzled as to why anyone would take him seriously on matters of geopolitics or religion. Both he and that ghoul Douglas Murray are fixated on this oversimplified idea of the clash of civilizations. It's completely ahistorical racist nonsense and Harris is too narcissistic to take a step back to notice it. You guys must have the patience of a saint to sit through his bullshit points without interrupting. Like his stupid comparison between driving cars and a bombing campaign, or his tired old straw-manning of other terrorism experts and scholars. Lastly, here's a helpful summary of Harris's view on geopolitics: "When we, the West mess things up, we only do it because we have the best of intentions. When our opponents do the same, it's because they're evil psychopaths." This is the worldview of a narcissistic toddler and it should be treated as such.

Said Polat

2024-02-13 00:20:32 +0000 UTC

It’s unfortunate, but to use one of Sam’s favourite words, his bloviating really destroyed the turntaking. Oh and thanks for reminding me Matt, I must go and mow my lawn now.

elcid

2024-02-13 00:02:30 +0000 UTC

Fuck me, he likes to talk.

OR

2024-02-12 23:51:05 +0000 UTC

Very helpful feedback. The new version going up in 15 minutes.

Christopher Kavanagh

2024-02-12 23:47:28 +0000 UTC

Very exciting. Haven't listened yet, but I think it is not overstating things to say that Western Civilization itself could hinge on the outcome of this conversation.

Robert Andrews

2024-02-12 23:43:15 +0000 UTC

Thanks for the heads up, some weird audio compression. I'll fix it.

Christopher Kavanagh

2024-02-12 23:38:51 +0000 UTC

Am I going to find my self yelling into the void listening to this?

Lys

2024-02-12 23:35:46 +0000 UTC

Sam's audio changes at 21:50

Níall Faughnan

2024-02-12 23:23:01 +0000 UTC

Sam "In This Moment" Harris, everybody

Erik Fast

2024-02-12 23:07:39 +0000 UTC

The more I hear Sam's condescending word salad, the more I never want to hear him again.

Mike Nelson

2024-02-12 22:59:13 +0000 UTC

Holy shit

Franz Pökler

2024-02-12 22:45:53 +0000 UTC

Wow Sam is really bad on the lab leak and doubling down.... quelle surprise

Protagonist Science

2024-02-12 22:37:58 +0000 UTC

I’ll tally them this time.

john statham

2024-02-12 22:20:17 +0000 UTC

Snowflake! Also I demand you go tally all the tribalism references in the last Sam appearance, I’m innocent! 😇

Christopher Kavanagh

2024-02-12 22:17:37 +0000 UTC

My spontaneously present awareness is primordially pure and ready to listen (while we're talking about Sam's wheelhouse topic) 🤓

Empty_Cognizance

2024-02-12 22:09:50 +0000 UTC

If Chris mentions tribal, I may go postal.

john statham

2024-02-12 22:07:04 +0000 UTC

My moral landscape is freshly mowed and aerated ready for seeds of wisdom.

Roscoe 112

2024-02-12 22:00:32 +0000 UTC

Let's get tribal

HustleTron9000

2024-02-12 21:48:14 +0000 UTC

You guys have no idea how excited I am to see this after loving your last interview with Sam

Andy

2024-02-12 21:40:38 +0000 UTC

Thanks for including the links!

Linda Sears

2024-02-12 21:38:52 +0000 UTC

YESSSSS.

Jake Lawrence

2024-02-12 21:35:38 +0000 UTC

Sam Harris: Right to Reply

Comments

The Tamil Tigers learned terrorism from Hezbollah like the perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide and the genocide in the Guatemalan mountains learned from Israelis.

Usually I can’t wait to listen to a new episode of DTG. This one I’m consuming in bite sized segments, it’s rough. You guys don’t get enough credit for your patience, it’s admirable.

Aye aye, we all can do things that annoy each other! Different standards and whatnot. Anyway, whatever the case I think we all agree on the harm that the guru folk do so that seems more significant to me!

Yes definitely. I agree and I’ve learned a lot about how to act online through this experience. Cheers to you you both ❤️

However, maybe dial down the intensity? Just my 2 cents.

I'll ask but in any case, appreciate all the previous support!

Yeah of course people can block when they want, and I was being really annoying with the tagging and I shouldn’t have, but I wish Matt or bad stats would’ve just said “stop” instead of blocking me.

I didn’t start making comments like this until he blocked me. Not sure what has changed with you guys as you have grown. I have supported you since before you started this project.

Perhaps for comments like this? Anyway, cheers and god bless.

No worry Amy! You are entitled to your opinions and you might not agree with our assessment anyway (but you can probably expect by now that we will express them!). In any case we appreciate the feedback and support!

Yeah true. I actually enjoyed her interview of Chris. It was in good faith on both sides and a good example of how people can both agree and disagree on the nuances of issues, and indeed have a “polite conversation” that doesn’t sugarcoat differences.

@brainbiter Can you elaborate on that?

Or you could ask how he thinks it’s gone for secular West Bank fattah? 🤷

Yeah she’d gone off my radar after excoriating interview with Chris but again caught my eye now and clearly not Harris’ brand of ex- Muslim as she commented on his recent remarks. Be good if Chris or Matt , despite reluctance, to be involved in worldly issues,would state a position on Gaza

Haha true, what a weird journey *she’s* had. Nor did he mention his arch-critic and former fan/colleague Eiynah Muhammed.

He also didn’t mention his Athiest colleagues and Right wing Nut Aayan Hirsi Ali has now discovered Jesus.

I obviously should have seen it more clearly years ago, but that moment when he said “the barbarians are inside the gates” really crystallized for me *just* how racist and reactionary he really is.

It was pretty incredible stuff wasn’t it? My remaining respect for him went right over the cliff by the end of it.

Right?? My god, you could seriously use him as a case example on the *dangers* of meditation in reifying the very self and the blind spots and delusions that the practice aims to deconstruct

The podcast 'it could happen here' did an interesting podcast about Hasbara (Israeli propaganda): https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-it-could-happen-here-30717896/

Yeah I noticed the way he was using hamas and the Palestinian people basically interchangeably! Disgusting!

It's exceptionally frustrating how he complains about people not being charitable and cultivating mindfulness, and then does this frequently. Like, how can someone be this uncharitable and unaware? If I wrote fiction with characters like this, I'd be told I was being way too on the nose.

-long support of your project!

Matt blocked me on Twitter because he is a thin-skinned little bitch! I’m cancelling my years

Thanks for your eloquent response. I imagine that many of the Israeli soldiers who are fighting in Gaza will be wracked with guilt for years.

There is no sin of moral equivalence morality is personal not an objective fact. Sam despite his strongest protestations is racist. He racistly assumes that a large proportion of the Muslim world are Jihadi or Jihadi prone. This is horse shit

Right!? This drove me mad. "Two anthropologists I spoke to had bad opinions on this subject". Ok. Your point being?

Aye, aye. I'm just confirming that my views on Buddhism are largely independent of Sam. I think his stance is much more of a symptom of a more general phenomenon.

Plus, I DID specifically say you WOULD HAVE BEEN acquainted with these things already, which you just confirmed

yeah, I do not like this guy

That’s why we haven’t made any edits to Sam. Just the usual edits to us but it’ll be fixed up in the release.

Chris for sure go with the original. If Sam were to decide that you were editing the words to “mislead” the audience he would never shut up about it. He’d be telling his great-grandchildren that story.

Totally agree. He takes forever to make a point and is incredibly verbose when doing so. Half the time the points he's making are not that complicated...

Matt did a great job trying to reign in the verbose Harris. Yes, Sam, you made your point. But you have no reply to Matt’s much more concisely stated rejoinder. Good job Matt. And good job Sam for showing up and joining the conversation in good faith.

Well he certainly acts like a ‘self’ or as we say in Ireland a ‘me feiner’

Is it possible that the loving eyes thing was meant as a joke? If in earnest, it's insane. But my first instinct on hearing it was that's Huberman being whimsical. I could be wrong. I've never consumed any of his content.

I don't think I've ever heard Sam acknowledge a goot point that he hadn't already considered.

A moral choice is a choice between two bad options. Dick Cheney is a scumbag, but he did not bomb Iraq with the intention of killing as many Iraqi civilians as possible. I believe that is the difference Sam is making.

Do you have a lot of experience with religious folks? I find that across the board, intensity of devotion tracks with truculence.

Phew! I thought it might have been the DISC trying to censor you

Yeah that was me trying to fix some audio artefacts and/or clarifying words with an option in the editing software. Sounds weird so I’ll probably just put up with the original or see if an actual editor can do something better.

Assuming he actually believes his own hysterical rhetoric, I just assume he has literally zero personal experience and relies entirely on second hand information from Murray.

All I can say is that I looked at my computer with thanking eyes when I heard Chris do the Scooby-Doo voice.

Nothing has damaged my respect for Sam more than hearing him in conversation with people he feels wronged by. If all I ever heard from him was his lectures and solo podcast episodes, I might have remained a fan of his for longer.

The fact that's he's even pause-able is *stunning*.

His definition of ethnic cleansing being "two groups don't get along and one of them moves away" made me laugh out loud.

Thank you re: Atman. It's always a distinction that makes my gums itch. I think this confuddlement lies with Dr Suzuki's (miss?)use of Freudian terms.

It seems Sam isn't across Sufism or Hassidism, either. There are many similarities with the forms of secular Buddhism he loves. I'm not sure he's ever seen gay pride in London either. The islamist plot takes a day off at least once a year, that's for sure.

Jesus christ, as a european that last segment makes him sound completely deranged. "London is lost"? Entirely detached from reality.

I agree. They might have let him get a word in edgewise.

“All political intentions are singular, entirely knowable (by Sam) and, when formed by Western states, altruistic in the end” great framework for analysis 🙄

Something dodgy going on with the audio here. First notices it at 01:11:00... its like the word jihadists was dubbed over after the recording. Noticed it a few more times after that

Yes, maybe if he didn't insist on making the same point ad nauseum that everyone had already accepted there would have been more time left at the end.

This is my fave comment so far. Just the sheer exhausting monologuing of it all. I genuinely hope he meditated after this.

Its kind of ironic how much his ‘jewish tribal identity’ shines through on his ideas regarding Palestine

He is a racist zionist. He views Palestinians as less deserving of life so all his intellectual masturbation should be viewed through that lens.

He is certainly a man singing from his own hymn sheet (irony intended). I'm not sure Chris saying "the floor is yours" was a good idea on this occasion.

Chris is often told on Twitter that he has no restraint. But his ability to: A) Not bring up Tribalism & B) Not bite when Sam used the T word are very laudable. I did also love Matt’s repeated: ‘Yes, I think you’ve made your point there, Sam.’

Also, it exposes Sam's arrogance that he was trying to explain what anthropologists think to Chris...who is an anthropologist.

To make this claim you’d need to show that academics studying extremism routinely fail to understand this. They don’t. Many of them have a lot more experience than Sam with fundamentalists.

But he looks into his miiiiiiind…what does he fiiiiiind. A tribe of Sam Harris clones?

“Self hypnosis through monologue” that’s brill ha 🤓

I mean no one ever hides their intentions- people wouldn’t do that. 😶

Yeah but the request was not to press Alina and Matt… it was to consult relevant experts if you have a whole bunch of questions for them that you think they cannot answer. They did answer all of them.

Only if it's not too much trouble. But since you two only have this project, and don't have other jobs or family, it should be no problem 😉

Could output one but maybe when main episode releases.

I guess he would have needed to know about the experts before recording his own episode, in order to do something different?

I felt bad for Matt as he was repeatedly trying to get his own points in while Sam steamrolled his way through

a moderator would definitely be needed. at least you didnt say he was close to the populist tribe

Thank you for sharing the additional resources, especially the NY Mag article.

Well I guess if Evan Thompson couldn't get anywhere regarding the "no self" debate it's not gonna be easy. Sam's meditation manifests as more a form of self hypnosis through monologue. I wish he was a bit more curious about your points.

I just finished the episode. My last statement is: Sam, what the fuck, man.

Sam's rhetoric is a powerful argument against the power of insight meditation.

Sam at the end talking about how you might need to ally yourself with unsavory people if things get bad enough and how only fundamentalist Christians really understand his ideas about the motivation of the people he doesn't like... is it time for Sam to become James Lindsay 2.0?

Thank you.

This guy makes me never want to meditate again!

He does not stop

It also insane that he authored a whole theory of morality based on minimizing objectively verifiable suffering of conscious beings ('the moral landscape') and doesn't even touch those moral concepts in his analysis of Israel's actions

Haha true, what a weird journey she’s had. Nor did he mention his arch-critic and former fan/colleague Eiynah Muhammed.

I obviously should have seen it more clearly years ago, but that moment when he said “the barbarians are inside the gates” really crystallized for me just how racist and reactionary he really is.

Right?? My god, you could seriously use him as a case example on the dangers of meditation in reifying the very self and the blind spots and delusions that the practice aims to deconstruct

The fact that's he's even pause-able is stunning.