I realize that I started to draw a circle, but didn't close it.
1.) Sam Harris came up as a critic of religion who argues that faith is an affront to rational thought.
2.) But he participates in a kind of faith-based and performative quasi-religion that posits alternative realities and rejects dealing with the world as it is.
3.) He's a critic of religion, on the grounds of preferring a rational engagement with the world, who isn't rationally engaged with the world.
It's necessary to connect both ends of his career, and to see that his dueling trajectories don't align.
Sam Harris did a spectacularly bad interview on the Triggernometry Podcast (possibly while on mushrooms). The link is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDqtFS_Pvcs . While I kind of liked some of his earlier work, he seems to have gone off the rails badly. In this interview he argues anything, including fabricating evidence would have been acceptable to take Trump down.
For him hatred of Trump transcends all other ethics. His book on Lying is good - but ultimately his ethic is entirely negotiable - since he doesn't believe he will ever answer to anyone other than himself. He is the poster child for the difference between morals and ethics.
Harris is now a walking case study of “the ends justify the means”. Any horrible unscrupulous act is acceptable if it means Trump is defeated. This includes voting for a senile president who runs a crime family with a crack addicted gangster son who peddles secrets to other nations (treason) and molests children. It wouldn’t even bother Harris if he had the dead bodies of those children in his basement. Just as long as the orange man doesn’t sit in the executive seat.
Think of it. He wants dead kids to prove Covid is that dangerous.
They were wrong because they were unlucky.
They were right because they were lucky.
Just because we were wrong doesn't mean we were wrong to act as we did. it's just too bad Covid didn't kill enough kids. It's a form of Whoopism: It wasn't 'rape-rape'.
Harris was always a middling two-bit intellectual. He just confirmed it with his amoral sophistry and obtuse logical fallacies.
The hubris runs so deep that they can't possibly believe they were wrong and others who were right arrived at that conclusion by error.
The problem Sam doesn't get through his thick, insufferable, arrogant head is that people arrived at conclusions by drawing on their life experiences, being astute observers of human nature, and understanding history and other methods lying outside the realm of science.
Spotting hysteria is not like spotting a toupee. It takes a lot of intuition. The intuition then has to be carefully incorporated with facts and data. And then it takes a lot of courage and confidence to accept what the result is.
This is a clunky comment I realize but I hope I got the gist through.
Absolutely, and most of all Harris doesn’t understand science/ think in scientific terms, but is irrationally guided by his emotions and spends his days building word castles around his illogical, emotionally rooted beliefs.
"Harris is now a walking case study of 'the ends justify the means'. You nailed it, the essence of the difference... Believe requiring an age appropriate level of philosophy as a subject in K-12 education could impart critical thinking skills and moral/ethical training in schools which have outlawed religion and logic.
As one who used to read/listen to Sam Harris and respect him as a thinker, I have been amazed at how quickly he self-sabotaged whatever semblance of credibility he ever had, all for performative compliance with the wokeist religion (of which he used to be a critic) and its claims about vaccines and COVID. Seeing his astounding and complete self-destruction, I can't help but feel like there's something biblical about it, like God let Sam rage and rant long enough to reveal himself as a fool and to serve as a warning to the public intellectuals of the future: take an egotistical pride in your own thinking such that you think you're infallibly seeing reality as it is, and you will be chastened and humbled pretty dramatically!
I think this suggests that in Harris' case his hostility to religion was ultimately founded less in his deep and abiding commitment to ruthless rationalism and more in religion's disapproval of recreational butt stuff.
*Nervously looks at all those statements about basements full of dead children*
I was confused for a moment, but I don't think he is gay. John Carter might know something I don't. I haven't really followed Sam Harris. For some reason I associate being a public intellectual with being gay. A lot of well known conservative thinkers are. It's the only way to be a conservative thinker and not be canceled.
Exactly. Do you think there was a time when 'free thinkers' actually thought freely and 'rationalists' were actually rational? Maybe before we were born?
Atheism and agnosticism are the most demanding of religions and only produce morons like this.
Well, you took the one comment I was going to make. For being so anti-religion, Sam Harris doesn't understand that he himself is caught up in it. Anyone who can say this--"So Bret turns out he was right about everything, right? Will he be vindicated? Not really, because at the time, his reasons for thinking what he was thinking at the time were insufficient. Right?”--is not dealing in science. He's dealing in faith and sorting people into the chosen and the heretics.
Harris is pathetic but that's not the most repulsive aspect of his existence. He's cruel. His only ability is to mimic what he perceives as the behavior of important people. And he viciously assaults anyone that doesn't affirm his status. He has no ideas. He is not capable of debate. So he attacks.
Well said. The insanity of it all... it hurts my brain! I have questioned all along. Perhaps it’s because early on I thought effective early treatment was a no brainer. So when that was attacked so viciously I though something else altogether -other than protecting and saving lives was afoot.
"But he participates in a kind of faith-based and performative quasi-religion that posits alternative realities and rejects dealing with the world as it is."🎯
Of course. Poor dear; if he must turn the world upside down and inside out, he shall be 'right' and people like Bret - these crazy anti-vaxxers - must be wrong. (Because of course HE can't be wrong.)
I'm pretty religious, and years ago when the New Atheism was a thing, even then Sam Harris seemed unhinged to me. When we would talk about God's existence, he would make basic errors that showed that he simply did not know or care what he was talking about. The only thing that has ever surprised me about him was that he was briefly associated with actual rationality between 2016-2018 when the woke stuff was unleashed. "Why is this willfully blind person associated with seeing the world clearly?" I wondered.
According to this video, Sam Harris believes that 1. DJT has told his followers not to get jabbed. 2. Lots of dissidents were given platforms during the "pandemic" because they fought the narrative.
Sounds out of touch with reality in those respects.
Haplessly trying to fill a God-shaped hole with anything and everything but God. All of us are guilty of it to some degree but isn't it interesting that the self-proclaimed smartest people in the room don't see it? 🥴
Exactly. In addition it is the going on "faith" rather than logic and defying every bit of physical evidence and adhering unquestioningly to a position.
Gee, it's like he lacks a moral compass, or something. Cue Nietzsche's madman speech.
He and Scott Adams are so arrogant, they cannot ever admit to having been duped. And, oh boy, were they ever played for suckers. At least 2 jabs for each. Enjoy, O Supremely Intelligent Ones.
Seriously. At least Peterson, who largely seems cut from the same cloth as Harris, admitted he was wrong about the jab.
Weinstein also, for that matter - didn't get the Fauci ouchie, but did freak out about the doomcoof early on ... and then admitted he'd been wrong as new data came in and he updated his model.
Intellectual credibility rests on two pillars: getting things right, and admitting error and fixing it. Midwits like Harris think it's only the former and so try to pretend they never have to do the latter. That's an intellectual style you see in awkward master's students; you're supposed to get beyond that, and get comfortable saying 'yeah I fucked up' by the time you finish your doctorate.
I have run a small business for over 25 years. I can't tell you how many times I heard, "Your crew did a great job" or, "You, Don, messed this up". Being in charge means you get all the blame and none of the credit. Ultimately, everything is my fault. You either learn to see where you screwed up, admit it and fix it, or sink.
You'll never guess, but I had a nice government job for ten years before that. Five weeks paid vacation, 80% of high three year average wage at retirement, 13 paid sick days, 13 paid holidays, great health care and life insurance, 12 weeks non paid family/medical leave. What was I thinking?!?!
Damn the whole government vs corporation debate is a mess, but the guess is that ANY organization succumbs to the game of "who blame others the hardest"... or so I heard? https://archive.ph/y1poc
I've enjoyed your comments whenever I've encountered them, but today is the first time I ever clicked on your bio. Wow, quite the resume! I'm impressed. I sometimes feel like I have no business opening my mouth ever and should just listen.
Exactly, our group of credentialed idiots (as you put it) is incapable of admitting error or failure. The self-righteous aren't into self-reflection.
Since our culture no longer values honor or integrity, they will remain in place, lording over a mass of people who inwardly seethe at their rule and hold them in utter contempt. We live in dangerous times, John Carter.
we dont need elites. We need normal folks getting into places of power. The House of Representatives was set up for this. Regular folks go serve there population for a few years years then get back to life. This entrenched political class and academic class is leading us to ruin.
Man oh man. Isn’t that so. I have more respect for my mailman and Mo , a great gal who drives and picks up the recycling
The words of wisdom that they often spew amaze me. . It’s time to get out the phone book and start picking names , as the old saying goes “better to be ruled by the first names in the phone book” , something like that. A far cry from the Tyrants and psychopaths running my country of Canada.
There will always be those who naturally rise to the top because of those of us with no interest in lording over others. The problem is keeping them accountable.
"Representative" government sure as heck didn't work and I fear Ancapistan looks just like the corporate oligarchy we have now with another much more shadowy government we don't call a government but something innocuous like "property owners."
Not against actual self-rule by way of property ownership, just don't know what the mechanism is to hold it accountable in an increasingly amoral society.
I've come to the conclusion that when they reach a certain size both government and businesses inevitably become corrupt. "Too big to fail' really means too big to be held accountable. Especially if the crooks running corporations are responsible for getting the crooks in government elected.
Limited Liability Structures, I think cause much of the problem. When you are isolated from the consequences of your actions. "That wasn't me, that was my company that did that"
Yes! There exist a serious blindness and I might add self indulgence in the elite class of today. It seems like the end of an era for that group to shine.
Intellectuals are highly susceptible to mind-control. Jacques Ellul's book on Propaganda, discussed reasons for that. A central piece is that they are sure they are too smart to be fooled.
I found that an interesting phenomenon. Those with status were most susceptible. Perhaps because the system was working for them and because of their need for status they were willing to bend themselves into pretzels to say the right things.
When you present yourself as being brilliant, you need to actually be brilliant. "Blah blah blah" and "I would've been right, if these things had been true" isn't enough.
We for absolutely certain need to recognize and choose better leaders. In many ways we do indeed get the leaders we deserve. An Ouroboros culture which destroys itself in order to save itself is stunningly stupid. The hubris here and lack of self understanding is stunningly apparent. Almost like watching four year old begin to encounter some rudimentary logic. However four year olds appear far more intelligent.
Jan 17, 2023·edited Jan 17, 2023Liked by Chris Bray
This is so useful, it's such the handy frame: There is no need to ever be incorrect about anything again, ever, because verifiably false statements can now be re-imagined into the context of a different reality (just change n variables) where they can be shown to be true. He has stumbled onto the most important epistemological discovery we've ever witnessed. Going forward, all statements are true because they are only temporarily false-in-waiting until we creatively imagine the n-dimensional context in which they are true. We don't need to disagree on anything, because we can agree on everything. Everything is now true, and the only condition is to accept Sam Harris's multiverse.
Because it might occur to someone to ask: I also have a UCLA PhD, from a different department, and was on campus at the same time as Harris, but I never met him. It’s a big place.
As an adult convert to the Catholic faith who arrived here via Thomas Aquinas, Dietrich von Hildebrand, Peter Kreeft, and Dietrich Bonhoffer, I've been mentally inviting Sam Harris to go f*** himself long before this. As a public health professional with 30 years in the field I've been telling the CDC, FDA, and NIH to go f*** themselves for decades but it's definitely intensified in the past three years. What a confluence of interests.
Nope, even if the vaccine 100% blocked transmission, there would still be the matter of safety. And even if it was 100% safe, there would still be the matter of government which does not own a single inch of your body to be able to mandate it.
"If only the green wire had been the right one to cut, I wouldn't have died in that nuclear explosion" The tombstone of the leader of the bomb squad.
"And all those people who told me to cut the red wire had no reason to believe they were right just because they were just.engineers, bomb makers, and nuclear scientists, and my boss from the NSA said, 'Cut the green wire'."
The NYT, Washington Post, and Twitterverse we all telling me to cut the Green Wire! How could I have known the actual experts who were silenced were right?!?
These people are mentally ill. Hadn’t heard of this story or this weirdo before now and I’m glad I didn’t. I don’t know what kind of sick f*ck you have to be to even think having children die would be an idea that one would entertain, but he sure takes the cake. Surprised he didn’t go to Berkeley (where I went - no PhD, just two bachelor’s degrees and the smartest thing I learned to do was type really fast). Always appreciate your posts, Chris.
"I don’t know what kind of sick f*ck you have to be to even think having children die would be an idea that one would entertain, but he sure takes the cake."
And just because I took the never-before-tried (had to change the definition of vaccine to accommodate) vaccine for something, not very serious and easy to treat, agreeing to be part of clinical trials for Big Pharma (despite their history of abundant criminality) instead, doesn't mean I was wrong.
Weinstein was right, but he was right for the wrong reasons, because even though the reasons he had for being right were right he couldn't actually have known for sure that he was right, which is basically the same as being wrong, so Harris, who was wrong, but knew with absolute certainty that he was right, and knew he was right for all the right reasons, was actually more right than Weinstein.
And this is what it looks like when you betray your avowed logical principles to join a cult and as a direct result drop the ball during the last down in the biggest game of your life. Harris' self-image is now in perfect conflict with reality, and the cogdis has shattered his brain.
I think that's Sam's problem with the Bible and the Koran: he hears people call them the "word of God," and he says, "Wait a minute! I never wrote those books!"
At around 4:16 in the first clip Sam Harris imagines a scenario where Covid is much worse and says, "that's different than the hypothetical experience we all had . . . ."
No, none of us had a hypothetical experience. We all had the opposite: a real experience.
Sam Harris is so psychologically turned around that he is mistaking reality for conjecture.
You can be sure that for the next pandemic they will be sure to tailor it to specifically target children because killing old folks is clearly not enough motivation for people to jab their kids with a shot that was never tested to prevent infection or transmission and had a few months of actual human tests before it was released on the world.
There will come a time when People wake up and see what was done to them and will be looking at a deck of cards to know who to hunt down and eliminate from the world, assclowns like the shithead in the video need to be on those decks along with fraudci, welensky, birx, bourla and their ilk. There were many steps in the fraud and a lot of players with their hands on a whole shit ton of murders even if they weren't actually pushing the plungers on the syringes.
and harris is doing a little predictive programming. the catastrophic contagion tabletop exercise is a rehearsal for the release - or fake release - of a virus targeting children in 2025.
the kids are next. otherwise there will be an orphan problem.
Sam's atheism is equally affected and pretentious. I don't know how anyone could listen to his alternately paralogical and obvious conclusions and ever take him seriously.
I noticed that the original concept of the Tabletop Exercise has been memory-holed. The link is bland now and does not reflect the original "pandemic of the young". I will try to find a wayback machine link. But my contributionabove seems to be a dud. They are smarting up...
I realize that I started to draw a circle, but didn't close it.
1.) Sam Harris came up as a critic of religion who argues that faith is an affront to rational thought.
2.) But he participates in a kind of faith-based and performative quasi-religion that posits alternative realities and rejects dealing with the world as it is.
3.) He's a critic of religion, on the grounds of preferring a rational engagement with the world, who isn't rationally engaged with the world.
It's necessary to connect both ends of his career, and to see that his dueling trajectories don't align.
Annnnnnnd good night.
Sam Harris did a spectacularly bad interview on the Triggernometry Podcast (possibly while on mushrooms). The link is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDqtFS_Pvcs . While I kind of liked some of his earlier work, he seems to have gone off the rails badly. In this interview he argues anything, including fabricating evidence would have been acceptable to take Trump down.
For him hatred of Trump transcends all other ethics. His book on Lying is good - but ultimately his ethic is entirely negotiable - since he doesn't believe he will ever answer to anyone other than himself. He is the poster child for the difference between morals and ethics.
Harris is now a walking case study of “the ends justify the means”. Any horrible unscrupulous act is acceptable if it means Trump is defeated. This includes voting for a senile president who runs a crime family with a crack addicted gangster son who peddles secrets to other nations (treason) and molests children. It wouldn’t even bother Harris if he had the dead bodies of those children in his basement. Just as long as the orange man doesn’t sit in the executive seat.
Think of it. He wants dead kids to prove Covid is that dangerous.
They were wrong because they were unlucky.
They were right because they were lucky.
Just because we were wrong doesn't mean we were wrong to act as we did. it's just too bad Covid didn't kill enough kids. It's a form of Whoopism: It wasn't 'rape-rape'.
Harris was always a middling two-bit intellectual. He just confirmed it with his amoral sophistry and obtuse logical fallacies.
The hubris runs so deep that they can't possibly believe they were wrong and others who were right arrived at that conclusion by error.
The problem Sam doesn't get through his thick, insufferable, arrogant head is that people arrived at conclusions by drawing on their life experiences, being astute observers of human nature, and understanding history and other methods lying outside the realm of science.
Spotting hysteria is not like spotting a toupee. It takes a lot of intuition. The intuition then has to be carefully incorporated with facts and data. And then it takes a lot of courage and confidence to accept what the result is.
This is a clunky comment I realize but I hope I got the gist through.
Absolutely, and most of all Harris doesn’t understand science/ think in scientific terms, but is irrationally guided by his emotions and spends his days building word castles around his illogical, emotionally rooted beliefs.
Beezy Steder
"Harris is now a walking case study of 'the ends justify the means'. You nailed it, the essence of the difference... Believe requiring an age appropriate level of philosophy as a subject in K-12 education could impart critical thinking skills and moral/ethical training in schools which have outlawed religion and logic.
"rational" thought being any thought that is aligned with his views, all other views are by default irrational.
As one who used to read/listen to Sam Harris and respect him as a thinker, I have been amazed at how quickly he self-sabotaged whatever semblance of credibility he ever had, all for performative compliance with the wokeist religion (of which he used to be a critic) and its claims about vaccines and COVID. Seeing his astounding and complete self-destruction, I can't help but feel like there's something biblical about it, like God let Sam rage and rant long enough to reveal himself as a fool and to serve as a warning to the public intellectuals of the future: take an egotistical pride in your own thinking such that you think you're infallibly seeing reality as it is, and you will be chastened and humbled pretty dramatically!
He fits the description in Proverbs 14:1
The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.”
Professing himself to be wise he became a fool.
I think this suggests that in Harris' case his hostility to religion was ultimately founded less in his deep and abiding commitment to ruthless rationalism and more in religion's disapproval of recreational butt stuff.
*Nervously looks at all those statements about basements full of dead children*
I'm just sayin'.
It's easy to hate religion when religion says "you are dysfunctional".
Theophobics like Harris don't do much for me.
Harris said religion kills rationality. IMO, ego is the real threat. Case in point, Sam Harris.
Well said.
I'd actually agree with him, but I have a much wider definition of "religion" than he does.
Is he gay?
I was confused for a moment, but I don't think he is gay. John Carter might know something I don't. I haven't really followed Sam Harris. For some reason I associate being a public intellectual with being gay. A lot of well known conservative thinkers are. It's the only way to be a conservative thinker and not be canceled.
would you call Sam Harris Conservative? I wouldn't, not even back before his head broke.
He was in a fair few debates with conservatives back before TDS but agin' 'em.
Exactly. Do you think there was a time when 'free thinkers' actually thought freely and 'rationalists' were actually rational? Maybe before we were born?
Atheism and agnosticism are the most demanding of religions and only produce morons like this.
Another great piece Chris.
😂👍
Well, you took the one comment I was going to make. For being so anti-religion, Sam Harris doesn't understand that he himself is caught up in it. Anyone who can say this--"So Bret turns out he was right about everything, right? Will he be vindicated? Not really, because at the time, his reasons for thinking what he was thinking at the time were insufficient. Right?”--is not dealing in science. He's dealing in faith and sorting people into the chosen and the heretics.
When talking about Bret you have to end every sentence with Right ! Right .
Harris is pathetic but that's not the most repulsive aspect of his existence. He's cruel. His only ability is to mimic what he perceives as the behavior of important people. And he viciously assaults anyone that doesn't affirm his status. He has no ideas. He is not capable of debate. So he attacks.
"He's cruel."
Seconded.
And long-winded.
Saying it was unlucky hundreds of thousands of children didn't die (to help him "own" the anti-vaxxers) sounds pretty cruel.
Well said. The insanity of it all... it hurts my brain! I have questioned all along. Perhaps it’s because early on I thought effective early treatment was a no brainer. So when that was attacked so viciously I though something else altogether -other than protecting and saving lives was afoot.
The very early report on the Princess Cruise Line told me all I needed to know.
Same!
"But he participates in a kind of faith-based and performative quasi-religion that posits alternative realities and rejects dealing with the world as it is."🎯
Of course. Poor dear; if he must turn the world upside down and inside out, he shall be 'right' and people like Bret - these crazy anti-vaxxers - must be wrong. (Because of course HE can't be wrong.)
I'm pretty religious, and years ago when the New Atheism was a thing, even then Sam Harris seemed unhinged to me. When we would talk about God's existence, he would make basic errors that showed that he simply did not know or care what he was talking about. The only thing that has ever surprised me about him was that he was briefly associated with actual rationality between 2016-2018 when the woke stuff was unleashed. "Why is this willfully blind person associated with seeing the world clearly?" I wondered.
According to this video, Sam Harris believes that 1. DJT has told his followers not to get jabbed. 2. Lots of dissidents were given platforms during the "pandemic" because they fought the narrative.
Sounds out of touch with reality in those respects.
Exactly! And perhaps if he had faith in God ( in whatever religion/spiritual practice) he would not need to “believe” in the vaccine.
Haplessly trying to fill a God-shaped hole with anything and everything but God. All of us are guilty of it to some degree but isn't it interesting that the self-proclaimed smartest people in the room don't see it? 🥴
You can have all the facts and still have none of the answers.
Sam appears to be afraid of the possibility of God's existence.
so he should be, unless he repents
He is talking about rational? I don't know whether to laugh or to cry.
And this is why simping over heroes are the worst. It stops people from making independent thought. It is one thing to be weary of "do your own research" but come on and do some replication... oh wait. https://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/2022/02/higher-impact-factor-journals-have-lower-replicability-indexes/
This is exactly it. You can’t escape religion apparently.
Everyone worships something. Just have to identify what it is.
Exactly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wC10VWDTzmU
One cannot be an Atheist and a Worshipper of Godernment at the same time.
I suspect there are few real atheists. Most just define "god" a different way.
There are anti supernaturalists/materialists. But they still worship things. Richard Dawkins worships science.
Exactly. In addition it is the going on "faith" rather than logic and defying every bit of physical evidence and adhering unquestioningly to a position.
Gee, it's like he lacks a moral compass, or something. Cue Nietzsche's madman speech.
He and Scott Adams are so arrogant, they cannot ever admit to having been duped. And, oh boy, were they ever played for suckers. At least 2 jabs for each. Enjoy, O Supremely Intelligent Ones.
We need new elites. Real ones, this time.
Seriously. At least Peterson, who largely seems cut from the same cloth as Harris, admitted he was wrong about the jab.
Weinstein also, for that matter - didn't get the Fauci ouchie, but did freak out about the doomcoof early on ... and then admitted he'd been wrong as new data came in and he updated his model.
Intellectual credibility rests on two pillars: getting things right, and admitting error and fixing it. Midwits like Harris think it's only the former and so try to pretend they never have to do the latter. That's an intellectual style you see in awkward master's students; you're supposed to get beyond that, and get comfortable saying 'yeah I fucked up' by the time you finish your doctorate.
I have run a small business for over 25 years. I can't tell you how many times I heard, "Your crew did a great job" or, "You, Don, messed this up". Being in charge means you get all the blame and none of the credit. Ultimately, everything is my fault. You either learn to see where you screwed up, admit it and fix it, or sink.
And that's why you've stayed in biz.
You'll never guess, but I had a nice government job for ten years before that. Five weeks paid vacation, 80% of high three year average wage at retirement, 13 paid sick days, 13 paid holidays, great health care and life insurance, 12 weeks non paid family/medical leave. What was I thinking?!?!
My guess is you don't care much for having a boss breath down your neck?
Government bosses are the worst. Total incompetence. They only care about their numbers, whether they reflect truth or not.
Damn the whole government vs corporation debate is a mess, but the guess is that ANY organization succumbs to the game of "who blame others the hardest"... or so I heard? https://archive.ph/y1poc
Absolutely. The buck stops right here.
I've enjoyed your comments whenever I've encountered them, but today is the first time I ever clicked on your bio. Wow, quite the resume! I'm impressed. I sometimes feel like I have no business opening my mouth ever and should just listen.
Well, thank you. Your own bio is impressive. Us parents and grandparents must stick together.
I feel that way myself about many other writers here.
I believe my kids think I have a problem with self censorship. They are not all happy with their Mom's choices.
Lol, most kids aren't. I always say grandparents and grandkids get along so well because they have a common enemy. 😂😂😂
Exactly, our group of credentialed idiots (as you put it) is incapable of admitting error or failure. The self-righteous aren't into self-reflection.
Since our culture no longer values honor or integrity, they will remain in place, lording over a mass of people who inwardly seethe at their rule and hold them in utter contempt. We live in dangerous times, John Carter.
Unintended Consequences, What would Henry Bowman do?
we dont need elites. We need normal folks getting into places of power. The House of Representatives was set up for this. Regular folks go serve there population for a few years years then get back to life. This entrenched political class and academic class is leading us to ruin.
Our current elites are credentialed idiots. What we need are actual elites, as determined by innate talent, proven ability, and genuine virtue.
I wish I have enough ink to pin how this problem will never end, and that sociable bureaucrats consistently displaces secluded/independent talent. Tried to though. https://bradnbutter.substack.com/p/porn-martyrs-cyborgs-part-1
Will need some more reviews of "Putt's Law" (dislocating talent) or " Shirky Principle" (prolonging the problem) or "Gervais Principle" (promotion by good customer service) or even "Lumbergh Principle" (promotion by committed maladapts). http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/ https://sasamat.xen.prgmr.com/michaelochurch/wp/?p=839
They do an excellent job at lying and stealing.
Man oh man. Isn’t that so. I have more respect for my mailman and Mo , a great gal who drives and picks up the recycling
The words of wisdom that they often spew amaze me. . It’s time to get out the phone book and start picking names , as the old saying goes “better to be ruled by the first names in the phone book” , something like that. A far cry from the Tyrants and psychopaths running my country of Canada.
There will always be those who naturally rise to the top because of those of us with no interest in lording over others. The problem is keeping them accountable.
"Representative" government sure as heck didn't work and I fear Ancapistan looks just like the corporate oligarchy we have now with another much more shadowy government we don't call a government but something innocuous like "property owners."
Not against actual self-rule by way of property ownership, just don't know what the mechanism is to hold it accountable in an increasingly amoral society.
I've come to the conclusion that when they reach a certain size both government and businesses inevitably become corrupt. "Too big to fail' really means too big to be held accountable. Especially if the crooks running corporations are responsible for getting the crooks in government elected.
Limited Liability Structures, I think cause much of the problem. When you are isolated from the consequences of your actions. "That wasn't me, that was my company that did that"
Look around
Entirely correct. Real grassroots. Real people speaking to each other. Reject politics as usual.
Yes! There exist a serious blindness and I might add self indulgence in the elite class of today. It seems like the end of an era for that group to shine.
Intellectuals are highly susceptible to mind-control. Jacques Ellul's book on Propaganda, discussed reasons for that. A central piece is that they are sure they are too smart to be fooled.
I found that an interesting phenomenon. Those with status were most susceptible. Perhaps because the system was working for them and because of their need for status they were willing to bend themselves into pretzels to say the right things.
"Those with status were most susceptible."
That's because they've had many nights, laying in bed, unable to sleep and the thought has crossed their minds "have i really earned this?".
They know they haven't, so they support what elevates them ;)
Great comment, Kathleen.
When you present yourself as being brilliant, you need to actually be brilliant. "Blah blah blah" and "I would've been right, if these things had been true" isn't enough.
We for absolutely certain need to recognize and choose better leaders. In many ways we do indeed get the leaders we deserve. An Ouroboros culture which destroys itself in order to save itself is stunningly stupid. The hubris here and lack of self understanding is stunningly apparent. Almost like watching four year old begin to encounter some rudimentary logic. However four year olds appear far more intelligent.
For all his meditation, his ego won't let him admit it. I think I will be taking his advice on that subject less seriously from now on.
They can't stand that we "commoners" told them so.
Delicious.
This is so useful, it's such the handy frame: There is no need to ever be incorrect about anything again, ever, because verifiably false statements can now be re-imagined into the context of a different reality (just change n variables) where they can be shown to be true. He has stumbled onto the most important epistemological discovery we've ever witnessed. Going forward, all statements are true because they are only temporarily false-in-waiting until we creatively imagine the n-dimensional context in which they are true. We don't need to disagree on anything, because we can agree on everything. Everything is now true, and the only condition is to accept Sam Harris's multiverse.
"But if I had not driven through that plate glass window into the store, I would not be drunk, and therefore....."
Well not everything can be true. Only those statements convenient to power need apply.
Brilliant
Because it might occur to someone to ask: I also have a UCLA PhD, from a different department, and was on campus at the same time as Harris, but I never met him. It’s a big place.
what a shallow and superficial guy Harris is
That’s because he was in the right places and you were in the wrong ones.
😳 🤯 whoa
As an adult convert to the Catholic faith who arrived here via Thomas Aquinas, Dietrich von Hildebrand, Peter Kreeft, and Dietrich Bonhoffer, I've been mentally inviting Sam Harris to go f*** himself long before this. As a public health professional with 30 years in the field I've been telling the CDC, FDA, and NIH to go f*** themselves for decades but it's definitely intensified in the past three years. What a confluence of interests.
🌻
Nope, even if the vaccine 100% blocked transmission, there would still be the matter of safety. And even if it was 100% safe, there would still be the matter of government which does not own a single inch of your body to be able to mandate it.
“I actually won the lottery but my ticket
didn’t have the correct numbers printed on it.” This guy is an insufferable twat.
"Therefore, you must give me the jackpot."
If only that would fly.
😂
"If only the green wire had been the right one to cut, I wouldn't have died in that nuclear explosion" The tombstone of the leader of the bomb squad.
"And all those people who told me to cut the red wire had no reason to believe they were right just because they were just.engineers, bomb makers, and nuclear scientists, and my boss from the NSA said, 'Cut the green wire'."
The NYT, Washington Post, and Twitterverse we all telling me to cut the Green Wire! How could I have known the actual experts who were silenced were right?!?
These people are mentally ill. Hadn’t heard of this story or this weirdo before now and I’m glad I didn’t. I don’t know what kind of sick f*ck you have to be to even think having children die would be an idea that one would entertain, but he sure takes the cake. Surprised he didn’t go to Berkeley (where I went - no PhD, just two bachelor’s degrees and the smartest thing I learned to do was type really fast). Always appreciate your posts, Chris.
"I don’t know what kind of sick f*ck you have to be to even think having children die would be an idea that one would entertain, but he sure takes the cake."
https://youtu.be/nP_VnVlFhXU
These people have been in charge for some time, a lot of people failed to notice is all.
"Just because you ended up being correct doesn't mean you were right."
And just because I took the never-before-tried (had to change the definition of vaccine to accommodate) vaccine for something, not very serious and easy to treat, agreeing to be part of clinical trials for Big Pharma (despite their history of abundant criminality) instead, doesn't mean I was wrong.
Equivalent to a two-year old tantrum.
I think that is what Sam Harris will finally say to Jesus.
Weinstein was right, but he was right for the wrong reasons, because even though the reasons he had for being right were right he couldn't actually have known for sure that he was right, which is basically the same as being wrong, so Harris, who was wrong, but knew with absolute certainty that he was right, and knew he was right for all the right reasons, was actually more right than Weinstein.
And this is what it looks like when you betray your avowed logical principles to join a cult and as a direct result drop the ball during the last down in the biggest game of your life. Harris' self-image is now in perfect conflict with reality, and the cogdis has shattered his brain.
Yeah, despite his criticisms of religious peoplenfor believing in God, Sam Harris believes very much in God too; it's just he thinks it's him.
Religious believer: "Imagine a being of pure consciousness who is omniscient and perfectly rational..."
Sam Harris: "I don't have to imagine it. You're describing me perfectly!"
"How dare these priests direct worship somewhere other than at ME!?"
I think that's Sam's problem with the Bible and the Koran: he hears people call them the "word of God," and he says, "Wait a minute! I never wrote those books!"
😂
All that's left for him to do is to run out in the street and hug a horse...
At around 4:16 in the first clip Sam Harris imagines a scenario where Covid is much worse and says, "that's different than the hypothetical experience we all had . . . ."
No, none of us had a hypothetical experience. We all had the opposite: a real experience.
Sam Harris is so psychologically turned around that he is mistaking reality for conjecture.
Good catch!!
Sadly, not just him!
You can be sure that for the next pandemic they will be sure to tailor it to specifically target children because killing old folks is clearly not enough motivation for people to jab their kids with a shot that was never tested to prevent infection or transmission and had a few months of actual human tests before it was released on the world.
There will come a time when People wake up and see what was done to them and will be looking at a deck of cards to know who to hunt down and eliminate from the world, assclowns like the shithead in the video need to be on those decks along with fraudci, welensky, birx, bourla and their ilk. There were many steps in the fraud and a lot of players with their hands on a whole shit ton of murders even if they weren't actually pushing the plungers on the syringes.
Already lots of young ones dying from the jab, sadly...
Sadly they’ve already planned for that https://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/our-work/exercises/2022-catastrophic-contagion/
and harris is doing a little predictive programming. the catastrophic contagion tabletop exercise is a rehearsal for the release - or fake release - of a virus targeting children in 2025.
the kids are next. otherwise there will be an orphan problem.
Sam's atheism is equally affected and pretentious. I don't know how anyone could listen to his alternately paralogical and obvious conclusions and ever take him seriously.
The death of the young was the topic of the latest tabletop simulation:
https://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/our-work/exercises/2022-catastrophic-contagion/
It's all scripted. Teach your children healthy skepticism.
I noticed that the original concept of the Tabletop Exercise has been memory-holed. The link is bland now and does not reflect the original "pandemic of the young". I will try to find a wayback machine link. But my contributionabove seems to be a dud. They are smarting up...
And healthy habits!
He and Neil Degrasse Tyson should get together and go bowling. 🙄
And Bill Nye.
the three of them against The Dude, Walter and Donny.
Directed by the Coens
Should be a laugh