Why do you hate him?

'Let me just plant a flag right there'
>[insert irrelevant thought experiment that makes opposing argument seem bad]

because he's a liberal ideologue trying to destroy every intermediary social institution and constitutive community that insulate the City of God from the City of Man

I think he might be literally autistic. Read his 'debate' with Chomsky. His rhetorical style amounts to an endless praise of his own 'rationality', 'objectivity' and moral righteousness.
samharris.org/the-limits-of-discourse/

are you 14?

32, I do member the mass war hysteria of early 2000s. He reminds me of that era.

Oh yeah he got btfo by Chomsky.

I hate his obnoxious followers more than him, he's just a mediocre writer and thinker who has been elevated to the mainstream by fedoras during the new atheist phase in the mid 2000s.
I mean for fucks sake you have retards claiming that he's gonna go down in history as one of the greatest philosophers of the 21st century.

...

...

It.... has something to do with hot stoves..

How to kill a theist; either:
--1. say that they are theistic solely because they were raised that way.
or (in the case that they are a convert):
--2. say that they have an emotional need for the consolation that faith brings and believe for that reason, because for a human to have emotional needs is a culpable offence that renders any of their intellectual choices null and void.

Sub-point: if theists throw the same arguments back at your atheism, flee the area :)

I don't. Most of what he says is on point. And even when he misspeaks, has not thought about an issue enough, or messes up, he almost always points that out and tries to correct himself publicly (though the public is always sure to let him know what he has done before he ever gets the chance to do it of his own volition, the speed of social media is always going to be faster than one person).

The problem is most people do not take the time or have the time to bother finding that follow up statement and end up latching onto whatever he has said in error not realizing he has admitted he was wrong. Admitting your wrong is not newsworthy but is respectable. Or the more common case scenario is quotes being taken out of context. Essentially he is human; people act like anybody they respect as being infallible, they do not make mistakes when they engage publicly, which is absolutely untrue.

Of course his stances are unpopular with the public so it hardly matters what he does, his critics are destined to be louder than his supporters. And while I do not agree with everything he has said, or some of the people who he has brought on his podcast, his lay-crowd are morons much like most publicly engaged people I suppose.

He's not as smart as people think he is. He makes a lot of very stupid arguments.

>"Let me just unpack this for you."
>[some analogy that implies that science can answer moral questions]

Free will doesn't exist because chemicals and stuff.

Happen to agree with him on that lol, and on Islam.

You need to get right with the Lord.

you-can-and-did-build-it.com/critique-of-sam-harris-book-free-will-part-1-man-as-robot/

It's ironic that nu-atheists want to accuse Christians of being enslaved to emotions (passions) when Christianity is almost entirely about overcoming the passions.

St. Aquinas is arguably the father of Rationalism.

Don't want to derail the thread with another free will debate. But the atom-for-atom argument is sound. The foundation of all matter and existence is built in physical principles and laws. Each minute aspect of a thing, living or inanimate, manifests itself towards the eventually whole. If that were not the case, there would be no chemicals, structures, or shapes; only indivisible and infinitely small particles.

That the qualities and laws of the material world combine to form complex structures and entities, and those entities have developed the perception of free will, does not magically supersede the laws of the universe.

lmao no

sam's asinine argument poorly attempts to conceal his efforts to equivocate efficient and material causes of humans

When do you decide to have a thought?

right after i fucked your mom as she's crying about how much of a fat worthless neckbeard her son is

kek

Don't bother with that person. You won't read an argument from him, only prepacked meme replies.

These are my main gripes. I only really know Stiller's opinion on science/morality, in which he (perhaps purposely) obfuscates what he means by science so as to lump philosophy in there. He ends up getting all the attention that a controversial claim like 'science can tell us right and wrong' (deservedly) brings, while getting to fall back on 'wait i didn't mean science the way you and the rest of the world understand the word' when people correctly say science can't tell you what's right and wrong.

Plus, his starter is that you should assume utilitarianism is the only moral premise you should have.

This is a good video, I think the first 15 minutes or so, about why he's incorrect in making this claim.

youtube.com/watch?v=9TR5N1XyUco&t=2s

I have sort of attached myself to Sam Harris on the topics of free will and morality. Basically I accept every argument he has without much thought. Can you guys recommend some reading/videos that argues against his views on those topics? Appreciate it very much

The video before you works pretty well on Sam's views of morality

NASCAR Top 15 Crashes 21st Century

isn't actually a neuroscientist, dumb trust fundie yankee raver kid who partied for 20 years and then traveled to tibet, came back and created a shell company to fund a fake neuroscience Ph.d

shadowtolight.wordpress.com/2015/01/07/neuroscientist-sam-harris/

bad actor

I just don't like his ratty Jew face, that would be reason enough in a sane world.

...

I don't, "Waking up" was 7.1/10

There's no such thing as "passion". Every phenomenological state is emotion, brainlet.

Untrustworthy Jewish physiognomy

separated at birth?

I haven't followed him ever. Maybe I'll get around to reading him one day but there's more important stuff to get through.

I don't hate him, in fact I think he has some of the most coherent stances on many of our era's biggest political squabbles.

What's really fucking annoying, however, is his refusal to admit that his ethical beliefs do not, can not, and will never be derived from science. He plays fucking hopscotch on the is-ought dividing line and seems incapable of acknowledging the issue with that.

>he hasn't heard of Sam's stove or Harris' hotplate BTFO Hume and proving the is-ought gap to be a nonissue

I'm with you on this. He has a financial interest in somehow bridging this gap, so the cynical part of me thinks he acknowledges the issue with it and is still determined to muddy the waters when he talks about it and science/morality in general.

>Sam's stove or Harris' hotplate
Holy fucking moses, my sides

thanks! that article was awful!

It even cites Ayn Rand as a source! haha, jeez

I don't, I actually kind of like him. Not because he's a profound thinker or anything but because its funny to watch him get kicked around like a little ankle biter when he tries to get into debates with actually smart people.

this forever

I don't want to defend Harris, and I find this information quite interesting. I will point out that, just as the post attacks Harris for having arrived at his conclusion before any supposed 'science' took place, this blog is called "Shadow to Light: Embracing Faith", so we can infer something about their agenda as well.

What I want to say about this, assuming it's all true, his degree is completely fraudulent, etc. is that, you know what? Good for him. Fuck academia.

Using titles like "neuroscientist" and appending "PhD" to your name is essentially nothing but neurolinguistic programming, or some such trick. Do we claim to be rationalists? Empiricists? Then until we've read the better part of someone's work for ourselves we don't truly know the extent to which that person is a "neuroscientist" or anything else.

It's very comfy to believe that institutions really work, that they filter out fakers and con-men, and that they continuously curate and scrutinize each other's work work in there. In [current year] this is demonstrably not true. Only last year there was a slew of scandals

> 2/3 of studies cannot be reproduced
> over half are never read by anyone outside of the publishing pipeline
> 90% are never cited

etc. etc. So he got his little badge to trick people into respecting him more. Good for him.

I really like his interviews with David Frum.

Makes sense. There's a long history of Jews doing this kind of thing.

His views aren't internally consistent and he looks like someone in China tried to make a knockoff Ben Stiller.

Academia has been entirely captured by subversive elements who've set up a self-referential clique they use to elevate other members of their in-group and exclude anyone who would challenge their ideas. This shit has been known for decades.

Luckily the people they've chosen to elevate have been of increasingly terrible quality they can now be spotted and called out.

sure, but I'm suggesting that the problem run deeper than some ongoing conspiracy.
In principle, it makes no sense to set up institutions to guarantee truths.
Academia to guarantee that professors really studied and know their subjects well.
the DMV to ensure that drivers have studied the laws and regulations
Passport to ensure that your name really is ____ and your nationality is ____ and etc. etc.

It all comes down to truths written down on pieces of paper, which can be forged. If it's digital its all the same. Biometric? tougher, but still doable.
And even confirmation on face-to-face basis with your cowrokers: It doesn't matter if I faked my way in and then behaved convincingly enough from then on. Or, even worse, as you suggest, if we're all in cahoots together.

For a hard empiricist, the confirmation or approval of an institution doesn't mean anything.

The University system isn't set up to guarantee truths though. Its purpose is to train critical thinkers. If you got a Ph.D. studying something that turns out to be incorrect 20-30 years later they don't rescind your Ph.D. because the "truths" you generate are largely irrelevant. Tons of Ph.D.s have been granted for techniques or processes that we don't even use anymore because better stuff came along.

There are a few problems with academia that could reduce some of the cliquey aspects. Publishing needs to be completely revamped from the ground up. Need to have journals for 'negative' or 'trash' results, need to slash the costs/membership fees of existing journals and add some kind of mandatory verification for published articles and remove entirely the publish-or-perish system for maintaining positions at universities. This would cut down a lot on professors publishing bullshit just to have their name out there. We need to cut a LOT of their government funding for a couple of decades to clear the ground of these pseuds who've glommed on over the years and we need to reduce the cultural prestige of the title somehow.

you're right, of course. Universities weren't created with the goal of creating titles like PhD in mind. Presumably they were created with the noble goal of gathering students and academics, and hopefully generating some new knowledge.

However, the prestige attached to titles is an inexorable consequence of this pattern of social dynamic. The sub-rationalization is "he is a member of the smart people club, surely if he were stupid they wouldn't keep his company".

in other words,
>we need to reduce the cultural prestige of the title somehow.
this is impossible.

>this is impossible
Not really. The intellectual class is really good at getting itself wiped out by nationalists, communists, and religious zealots. I used to wonder why anyone would do such a thing.

killing some intellectuals doesn't change the cultural attitude towards the intellectual class.

> they were the BAD intellectuals. And this distinguished citizen is a GOOD intellectual because he is still alive and he as a PhD!!!!11!!1one

This.
He's what a stupid person would think somebody smart is like.

>St. Aquinas is arguably the father of Rationalism.

Name a few
Bonus points if postmodernism isn't the subject, we already know that he's not great with the subject

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His framework for objective morality is based on ludicrously subjective assumptions

pic related: it's you

it's really is hard to tell if harris is only ever feigning ignorance, playing to his philosophically illiterate audience, or if he genuinely does not comprehend his own positions nor the arguments leveled against them.
dude claims hard determinism is true, yet allows for degrees of freedom in even individual choices, and yet also denies the possibility of compatibilism
what
the
fuck

being a 'compatibilist' should be grounds for public execution
that word is literally 'free will is not real but actually it is :)'

What did he mean by this?

>democratic regimes
In the eyes of most of the world, ee're the bad guys. History will remember our crimes.

which assumptions, that pain is bad and pleasure is good? its a pretty universal basis for morality, no one wants to be tortured and everyone wants to be happy.

history won't be written by anyone who cares about bombing browns or wasting muh tax payers dollars, maybe by people who think dysgenics is lamentable tho

This desu, they should be lined up next to the 'absurdists'.

I don't think he misconstrued it. The first guy implied that the desire to try is not also something that the brain decides to do or not do. Trying to do something is no more a choice than caring about something or loving something. If your brain interprets the inputs as being a good justification for the action - the trying, for example - then you will try.

We dont read muslims here.

I don't know much about him but I just don't like the idea of mankind being simply a machine and the mind just a side effect of that. I have absolutely no reason to think otherwise with all the evidence, I simply do not want to.

this

>I have absolutely no reason to think otherwise with all the evidence, I simply do not want to.

religion in a nutshell

I'm a convert but nice try :P

Because he's another smug analyticfag that thinks he's 100% objective and logical. And he is, but only because he defines what he believes logic and objectivity is. He's worse than Thunderf00t and both have the tendency to dismiss science or try to thought experiment their way around it when it doesn't agree with them.

>dismiss science
not disagreeing, but i thought he was all about pushing scientism?

For the record I also hate his smug 'le rational man' persona

They say they are, but the mask slowly peels off as you get into topics about things they don't like. For example, when Rebecca Watson told people at an atheist conference not to ask her out late at night in a confined space. Whether you agree with it or not, the "rational atheist's" response to it was completely out of order. They went apeshit and all rationality was quickly abandoned because their feelings were hurt. "Horsemen of the Apocalypse" (cringe) of the atheist movement and supposed pillar of rationality Richard Dawkins' response was not to address Watson, but to right some stupid letter pretending to be towards a Muslim women who "has real problems". This is a non-sequitur is as childish as saying "yeah, but why are you launching rockets when there's starving people!". It was a complete over reaction to one sentence at a conference.

Thunderf00t has also frequently been caught doing unscientific things. Shaun caught him splicing and editing Anita's videos to take her out of context and make it look like she said things where she didn't, and he also once told women educating men on rape is useless and they should be aggressive towards men that might like to rape them rather than get the fuck out of there because of some evopsyche nonsense about rapists being predators looking for easy prey. He fell that far off the mark he's used an example of when he was tracked by a snow leopard in the US and "didn't look frightened" so it left him alone. That's complete nonsense because aren't fucking snow leopards and he doesn't know if that's why it left him alone for a start, and second science doesn't give a shit about his ad hoc conclusions, he provided no evidence or studies that said acting aggressive or confident scares off rapists, because as far as I'm aware non exists.

Analytics are often prone to this sort of stuff because they're so up their own arse they forget the boundaries of logic. Its true, logic is amazing, but its not magic.

I don't buy his argument where social things can be scientifically wrong. He basically says hijabs are scientifically wrong and says it's science but it's just his feels.

itd be a matter of observing women's neural states to determine their overall happiness and self-actualization. i dont think anyone besides islamic nutcases would claim a woman's optimal lifestyle is being restricted religiously, socially and emotionally like that.

Never seen Zoolander?

this is so dumb it hurts

no u

You miss the point, overall happiness and self actualisation isn't a scientific criteria, neither is an optimal lifestyle.

I just don't believe his argument. It is an opinion. These aren't objective truths. It is not intuitive and with close deep inspection it still bullshit.

happiness and satisfaction are measurable states, unless you believe consciousness is magic. with increasingly advanced brain imaging technologies, and large datasets, we can effectively demonstrate which lifestyles produce happier people on average.

The point isn't that happiness that can't be measured, its that aside from base needs, what makes a person happy becomes more arbitrary and relevant to the individual the more complex the behavior becomes, depending on social factors.

oh fuck

just like im sure there are masochists who enjoy being with sadists, or transsexuals who are happier chopping their dicks off. yet does anyone actually think these are optimal lifestyles? its pretty obvious theyre coping mechanisms for the conditions they were born into.

as we develop better technologies for understanding the brain, it will become increasingly obvious what actually makes people happier, and what are just stories people tell to themselves.

>just like im sure there are masochists who enjoy being with sadists, or transsexuals who are happier chopping their dicks off. yet does anyone actually think these are optimal lifestyles?

What would define an optimal lifestyle. According to science, yes, transgender people getting SRS is their optimal lifestyle.

>as we develop better technologies for understanding the brain, it will become increasingly obvious what actually makes people happier, and what are just stories people tell to themselves.

No it won't. You can only ever measure how people feel in relation to the society they exist in.

Stuff like this is why ISIS and Al-Qaeda are objectively right

Honest to God, I forgot this faggot existed.

>What would define an optimal lifestyle.

This is a non-position

It's not as obvious as you seem to think, that, for example, the lattice structure of salt at the atomic level is equivalent to the structure of a human mind. It's therefore similarly non-obvious that free will is tantamount to 'magic', as you claim.

Is that guy some kind of sociobiologist or psichologyst? is he in some way or another linked to Peterson?