Sam Harris

A retarded argument

if you like him, you should give him a shot

This is so accurate it's spooky.

I just listen to his podcast but if I were to read one it would be The Moral Landscape.

Sam Harris is a 13 years man in a 47th form trying to be Siddhartha when he is a simple quantity of infants.

Sam Harris is at once a pedantic self righteous liberal, a hack trust fund neuroscientist, a fedora tipping atheist and a warmongering neocon shill. People who feel the need to constantly remind others of how 'rational' they are tend to be borderline psychotic at best.

The same goes for so called 'classical liberals' invariable some of the most insufferable and illiterate people around, they make /pol/ look good in comparison

waking up >>> free will > islam and the future of tolerance > moral landscape > lying >>> end of faith > letter to a christian nation

it was hard to rank these because Waking Up is by far better than the rest and every between that and end of faith is pretty close. free will is good and short but it could've been another chapter of waking up. waking up is fun and covers many loose subjects that can be considered "spiritual"

Harris gets a bad rap due to the successful branding of le fedora, a loud minority of annoying fans and his punchable face which he uses to be condescending too often. he gets a bad rap here because his writing is accessible and people here want to read incomprehensible texts so they can brag about it
it's utilitarianism and moral absolutism in a book, if that interests you then probably

Absolutely pointless remark. Go fuck off to /pol/ with that shit if you're so unbalanced.

>a warmongering neocon shill
Explain please.

OP here. Good to see there's finally someone who tells me what to think about an author. Thank you guys I was worried I had to come to my own conclusions.

He has a history of supporting disastrous US foreign policy. He seems to adhere to simplistic clash of civilisations narrative of rational enlightened USA vs irrational mahometan jihadists, ignoring glaring contradictions such as USA's support of Saudi Interests and Sunni Jihadism in general. He even did a podcast with Michael Weiss, the Daily Beast's neocon al qaeda shill in chief.

samharris.org/podcast/item/inside-the-crucible-syria-and-the-islamic-state

Waking up is self-help tier garbage aimed at the edgy pseudo-spiritual minority within his fandom of fedora tipping positivist retards, avoid at all costs. Instead of wasting time on a terrible book, look up some guided mindfulness meditations and try for yourself. Same for drugs. Enjoy.

Listen to his podcast, some of them are are pretty interesting depending on the guest. If you must read a book of his, id go for either the moral landscape or the one about islam. At least those touch on relevant and interesting topics.

read Chomsky instead

What's his stance on scientific progress?

What would you recommend?

>so long as you have good intentions, consequences don't matter

Chomsky is an irrational regressive who disrespected 9/11. There are limits to decency and rational discourse and Chomsky has gone beyond them and sided himself with the radical islamic terror. You have to respect the 9/11

>What would you recommend?
Who Rules the World is a good primer

A lot of his books are just collections of talks and interviews and essays, so just read them rather than the books

Or go back to earlier works
Manufacturing Consent
Fateful Triangle
The Political Economy of Human Rights

>irrational regressive

Thanks. Adding it to the list.

the regressive left rejects enlightenment values such as logic and rationality

His books are all similarly poorly thought out and well presented. Read Waking Up, it gives a nice rundown of some incompatibilist arguments that are popular among psychologists and psychology-minded (read: not good) philosophers.

And that's how you write a proper reply. Thanks, user.

> uses words like retard
> calls others edgy

it seems you haven't gotten past the titles of the 3 books you mentioned. i'm recommending waking up as someone who has read it and is familiar with meditation and psychedelic drugs for years before reading Harris, it still valuable and interesting. i've read it countless times, though I read chapters based on what I feel like at the time out of order. to me Harris is author of waking up first and everything else second. i also wouldn't call it a self help book and anyone who would hasn't read it. it's just him saying "hey atheists, some thing about spirituality are actually useful" and adding a few stories and thought experiments along the way. everyone reccing moral landscape is adding "sounds most interesting", i think you should put more weight in the recs of those who've read him.
this. Chomsky knows foreign policy. his lectures give you a good idea of what he's like. most of his books blend together for me but personally Media Control and On Anarchism stick out. Harris is an easier read but Chomsky is just much more than surface level observations, the have an email argument published on Harris' site

I read "Free Will". Would recommend. It's short, but says everything it needs to.