I agree that Dave Rubin is dumb. But I have a strong suspicion you simply disagree with Sam Harris and find it convenient to dismiss him as dumb rather than engage with his arguments. Otherwise, why not give even a single example here?
To say that "Sam Harris is without a doubt one of the dumbest people alive" means you're not even trying to be fair. I translate this to mean "Sam Harris says things I passionately disagree with."
But prove me wrong. What are some things Sam has said that are Dave Rubin-level dumb?
The greatest hits contain n BUT ARE NOT LIMITED TO
"Some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them" in his book, The End of Faith (2004). He insists this is about jihadists in a state of war, but he wrote it about beliefs, and the sentence says what it says.
The nuclear first strike passage in same book. Says that if an Islamist regime acquired long range nukes, a preemptive strike killing tens of millions "may be the only course of action available to us." His defense is that he was describing a horrible scenario, not endorsing it, but the hedging in the actual text is extremely thin.
"In Defense of Torture", he argued that if we accept collateral damage, we should accept torturing suspects, because they are all ticking time bombs. he kept defending it for years too.
He said openly that "We should profile Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim" and then got publicly dismantled on his own blog by a security expert, who explained why this fails even on pure security logic, and Harris just... didn't concede.
"The people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists" (from 2006, in the LA Times). He endorsed of the people who became the European far right via purely unexamined shallow aesthetic opinion.
He said Ben Carson understands the Middle East better than Noam Chomsky. He said Carson, whom he called dangerously deluded, still grasps jihadism better than Chomsky. This was after the Chomsky email exchange, which Harris published himself, apparently believing he'd won it.
He has this recurring argument that Western collateral damage is categorically different because we mean well, which does infinite load bearing work across everything he writes about Israel, drone strikes, and Iraq.
He presented The Bell Curve's race IQ claims as settled science suppressed by political correctness, treated Murray as a pure martyr, then melted down at Ezra Klein and published private emails that made himself look worse.
The Hunter Biden line on Triggernometry in 2022 where he says "Hunter Biden literally could have had the corpses of children in his basement, I would not have cared," in service of arguing that a conspiracy to keep Trump out would've been justified. Even granting the hyperbole, choosing that hyperbole while positioning yourself as the last honest rationalist is remarkably stupid.
Beyond that, Harris promoted Rubin heavily in the early IDW era, which is arguably the most Dave Rubin thing he ever did.
None of these break down to a simple disagreement, however I'm fully willing to accept that super stupid people can't accept that and treat being wrong or dangerously stupid as a simple opinion difference. He recently stated that he won't debate anti zionists, which means anyone who disagrees with him falls into the mentally deranged category he places so many people in.
I have a feeling that you will not register any of these and respond with a dismissal but we can go into so many things in his career in public in detail for days, and the only result would be the realization that consuming Sam Harris content makes ppl stupid.
Wow thanks for engaging! I appreciate you came with receipts!!
Many of his views you criticize above are the result of two basic positions he holds:
1) Consequentialism is the optimal moral framework. This of course is infinitely debatable, but also a mainstream position in philosophy.
2) Jihadism/religious fundamentalism is a major, active threat to secular Western societies. This is also infinitely debatable and excruciatingly complicated to get into, but I find it worth taking seriously given that so many conflicts in the world today stem from radical religious ideologies.
If you are a consequentialist and an atheist activist, as Sam is, then the positions he holds downstream of these views are totally rational, if controversial and debatable. But still I don't think it's fair to dismiss them as "dumb."
Re the Hunter Biden line on Triggernometry, Sam is obviously correct. You left out the next thing he said: "It’s Hunter Biden, it’s not Joe Biden." Why on earth would we judge Joe Biden for the supposed corruption of his son when TRUMP HIMSELF IS ACTUALLY INCREDIBLY CORRUPT. The political race was between Joe Biden and Donald Trump; their children have nothing to do with it. Sam's point lands even harder today when the "corruption" of Hunter has never been proven despite the best efforts of Republicans (I'd say it's totally debunked at this point--and can explain why if you're curious), and Trump's corruption has exploded exponentially.
Neither of these points are excruciating to get into. I'm trained in this specific area of philosophy and am happy to go over why Sam is stupid on them. Sure the second point might be longer than a simple dismissal of util or consequentialism, but it's not going to be complex. The idea that these religious pseudo topics are complex is due to the vast amounts of obfuscation directly from morons like Sam.
I can even get into his science work if you have the time and energy.
Still seems like you just disagree with him, which is fine. The idea that he's stupid of "a moron" would mean that he's ignorant of some facts or has illogical reasoning. Haven't seen an example of that yet.
The fact that you so accepted the anti-Sam narrative that he was wrong on his (correct) Hunter Biden take tells me, still, that you just disagree with him, which of course is fine.
Could you list some criteria that you will accept so I don't waste time. I would say that his logical skill is like highschool atheist. So if you want to demonstrate what to show you in this vein I will happily provide
"Look at the wolves and the owls and the cockroaches."
Interesting! I just finished Clarice Lispector's *The Passion According to G. H.*, which is an epiphanic meditation on this very subject (with a dying cockroach as its angel). I think Lispector would agree with you here, about the question of life's meaning being an unfortunate lapse in attention. There's one bit in there where she says she must be like a "witch doctor" (as opposed to a priest, I guess) and pray not *about* the thing, but pray the thing itself. That sounds like a good goal to me.
I'm no Sam Harris, but my own take (as of this moment): Life's overall meaning is the wrong question. Life is a medium in which meaning can happen. It's a creative act of persons and groups, and meaning does and should change throughout one's lifetime. Which I guess seconds this:
"The mystery isn’t a problem, and the mystery can be the source of a very fun exploration of the world."
It doesn't lol. The only meaning of life is what we who are "living" choose to give it.
Hey Peter, I can demonstrably prove at any point in real time that Sam Harris is so stupid it actually rubs off on others.
He has terrible scholarship, horrible argumentation, no understanding of any topic he describes, the list goes on.
Sam Harris is without a doubt one of the dumbest people alive. He's almost Dave Rubin stupid but it's very hard to even get to Dave Rubin stupid
I agree that Dave Rubin is dumb. But I have a strong suspicion you simply disagree with Sam Harris and find it convenient to dismiss him as dumb rather than engage with his arguments. Otherwise, why not give even a single example here?
To say that "Sam Harris is without a doubt one of the dumbest people alive" means you're not even trying to be fair. I translate this to mean "Sam Harris says things I passionately disagree with."
But prove me wrong. What are some things Sam has said that are Dave Rubin-level dumb?
The greatest hits contain n BUT ARE NOT LIMITED TO
"Some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them" in his book, The End of Faith (2004). He insists this is about jihadists in a state of war, but he wrote it about beliefs, and the sentence says what it says.
The nuclear first strike passage in same book. Says that if an Islamist regime acquired long range nukes, a preemptive strike killing tens of millions "may be the only course of action available to us." His defense is that he was describing a horrible scenario, not endorsing it, but the hedging in the actual text is extremely thin.
"In Defense of Torture", he argued that if we accept collateral damage, we should accept torturing suspects, because they are all ticking time bombs. he kept defending it for years too.
He said openly that "We should profile Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim" and then got publicly dismantled on his own blog by a security expert, who explained why this fails even on pure security logic, and Harris just... didn't concede.
"The people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists" (from 2006, in the LA Times). He endorsed of the people who became the European far right via purely unexamined shallow aesthetic opinion.
He said Ben Carson understands the Middle East better than Noam Chomsky. He said Carson, whom he called dangerously deluded, still grasps jihadism better than Chomsky. This was after the Chomsky email exchange, which Harris published himself, apparently believing he'd won it.
He has this recurring argument that Western collateral damage is categorically different because we mean well, which does infinite load bearing work across everything he writes about Israel, drone strikes, and Iraq.
He presented The Bell Curve's race IQ claims as settled science suppressed by political correctness, treated Murray as a pure martyr, then melted down at Ezra Klein and published private emails that made himself look worse.
The Hunter Biden line on Triggernometry in 2022 where he says "Hunter Biden literally could have had the corpses of children in his basement, I would not have cared," in service of arguing that a conspiracy to keep Trump out would've been justified. Even granting the hyperbole, choosing that hyperbole while positioning yourself as the last honest rationalist is remarkably stupid.
Beyond that, Harris promoted Rubin heavily in the early IDW era, which is arguably the most Dave Rubin thing he ever did.
None of these break down to a simple disagreement, however I'm fully willing to accept that super stupid people can't accept that and treat being wrong or dangerously stupid as a simple opinion difference. He recently stated that he won't debate anti zionists, which means anyone who disagrees with him falls into the mentally deranged category he places so many people in.
I have a feeling that you will not register any of these and respond with a dismissal but we can go into so many things in his career in public in detail for days, and the only result would be the realization that consuming Sam Harris content makes ppl stupid.
Wow thanks for engaging! I appreciate you came with receipts!!
Many of his views you criticize above are the result of two basic positions he holds:
1) Consequentialism is the optimal moral framework. This of course is infinitely debatable, but also a mainstream position in philosophy.
2) Jihadism/religious fundamentalism is a major, active threat to secular Western societies. This is also infinitely debatable and excruciatingly complicated to get into, but I find it worth taking seriously given that so many conflicts in the world today stem from radical religious ideologies.
If you are a consequentialist and an atheist activist, as Sam is, then the positions he holds downstream of these views are totally rational, if controversial and debatable. But still I don't think it's fair to dismiss them as "dumb."
Re the Hunter Biden line on Triggernometry, Sam is obviously correct. You left out the next thing he said: "It’s Hunter Biden, it’s not Joe Biden." Why on earth would we judge Joe Biden for the supposed corruption of his son when TRUMP HIMSELF IS ACTUALLY INCREDIBLY CORRUPT. The political race was between Joe Biden and Donald Trump; their children have nothing to do with it. Sam's point lands even harder today when the "corruption" of Hunter has never been proven despite the best efforts of Republicans (I'd say it's totally debunked at this point--and can explain why if you're curious), and Trump's corruption has exploded exponentially.
Neither of these points are excruciating to get into. I'm trained in this specific area of philosophy and am happy to go over why Sam is stupid on them. Sure the second point might be longer than a simple dismissal of util or consequentialism, but it's not going to be complex. The idea that these religious pseudo topics are complex is due to the vast amounts of obfuscation directly from morons like Sam.
I can even get into his science work if you have the time and energy.
Still seems like you just disagree with him, which is fine. The idea that he's stupid of "a moron" would mean that he's ignorant of some facts or has illogical reasoning. Haven't seen an example of that yet.
The fact that you so accepted the anti-Sam narrative that he was wrong on his (correct) Hunter Biden take tells me, still, that you just disagree with him, which of course is fine.
Could you list some criteria that you will accept so I don't waste time. I would say that his logical skill is like highschool atheist. So if you want to demonstrate what to show you in this vein I will happily provide
"Look at the wolves and the owls and the cockroaches."
Interesting! I just finished Clarice Lispector's *The Passion According to G. H.*, which is an epiphanic meditation on this very subject (with a dying cockroach as its angel). I think Lispector would agree with you here, about the question of life's meaning being an unfortunate lapse in attention. There's one bit in there where she says she must be like a "witch doctor" (as opposed to a priest, I guess) and pray not *about* the thing, but pray the thing itself. That sounds like a good goal to me.
I'm no Sam Harris, but my own take (as of this moment): Life's overall meaning is the wrong question. Life is a medium in which meaning can happen. It's a creative act of persons and groups, and meaning does and should change throughout one's lifetime. Which I guess seconds this:
"The mystery isn’t a problem, and the mystery can be the source of a very fun exploration of the world."
Great post, Peter!