Why does Veeky Forums hate and meme upon Ben Stiller's character Samual Harris...

Why does Veeky Forums hate and meme upon Ben Stiller's character Samual Harris? He raises some good points and is well spoken.

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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-psychiatry
youtube.com/watch?v=xlCPkmb6cuY
samharris.org/blog/item/on-the-mechanics-of-defamation
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Veeky Forums is the Muslim apologist board

No

He's a non-philosopher that actually thinks science can inform moral opinion.

I bought a copy of his """"book"""" moral landscape and literally pissed on it after reading it

Because he is shit.

What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, Noam Chomsky? I’ll have you know I graduated with a PhD in neuroscience, and I’ve been involved in numerous thought experiments, and I have over 300 confirmed psychedelic trips. I am trained in fMRI research and I’m the top philosopher in the entire Western hemisphere. You are nothing to me but just another regressive. I will wipe you the fuck out with my magic wand, the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my fucking words (in context). You think you can get away with PC propaganda on the internet? Think again, Noam. As we speak I am contacting my secret cult of Harrisites across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call "free will". I can email you anywhere, anytime, and you can take me out of context in over seven hundred ways, and that’s just by quoting me. Not only am I extensively trained in religious debate, but I have access to the entire arsenal of Project Reason and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable ass off the face of the continent, you little Marxist. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little regressive leftist comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue. But you couldn’t, you didn’t, and now you’re paying the price, you goddamn muslim apologist.

everyone knows you don't go full retard. unwritten rule of the academy

This is actually a bit funny.

>thinks science can inform moral opinion

It actually can though once. Once you realize morality is innately bundled up with human wellbeing and flourishing, both being areas science can in principle address directly, this becomes non-controversial.

>I’ll have you know I graduated with a PhD in neuroscience, and I’ve been involved in numerous thought experiments, and I have over 300 confirmed psychedelic trips. I am trained in fMRI research and I’m the top philosopher in the entire Western hemisphere.

kek

because he doesnt know shit.
he is a pleb tier scientism meme.
"free will doesn't exist because science is deterministic and im dumb hurr"
he should for once read some philosophy of science or an hero for good

He isn't wrong though, it's tumors all the way down.

Looks like the critics have read and understood his point of view in full and have graced us with strong counter-arguments.

this

When is the debate with Jordan Peterson?

If you define 'flourishing' and 'well-being' as material comfort and success, then yes, 'science'--really, technological innovations and wealth generation/distribution--can help you attain those ends. But you've presupposed that which is to be demonstrated--what 'morality' is--and narrowed its domain precisely so that it may be encompassed by 'science'. This is incredibly naive and simultaneously tendentious reasoning.

An incompetent philosophy lecturer was teaching a class on moral properties.

"Before the class begins, you must get on your knees and worship the is/ought problem. You must accept that it's fundamentally impossible to get an 'ought' from an 'is' using empiricism.

At this moment a brave atheist, with a PhD in neuroscience and who had over 45 million youtube debate views stood up.

"Raping a child is wrong/bad/negative."

The arrogant professor smirked quite Scottishly and smugly replied,

"On what basis, you stupid STEM-tard? Raping a child is a descriptive statement. You are prescribing a normative value and implying it 'ought' to be a negative thing."

"Wrong. The entire debate resides inside a semantic framework with the concept of normative having no relevance. All we have are 'IS' statements based on empirical observation, and various forms of the verb 'TO BE'. There 'IS' a Child; the Child 'WAS' raped; a governing body 'HAS' decided that it's a punishable offense; you 'ARE' crying about 'oughts'; and you 'ARE' ignored while punishable offenses 'ARE' influenced by empirical observation, economic trends, social pressures and other forms of 'IS'. Your so-called normative 'ought' has been demolished because we can and do form policies and decisions based on inter-subjective semantic models, and individuals voice their own subjective 'IS' statements to collectively influence the framework."

The professor was visibly shaken, and dropped his chalk and copy of A Treatise of Human Nature. He stormed out of the room crying about what he ought to do. There is no doubt that at this point our professor, David Hume, wished he had embraced New-atheism.

The previously faux-Christian contrarian students erupted into applause and declared that moral values are officially in the hands of society. An eagle named "the scientific method" flew into the room and perched atop the copy of "The Moral Landscape" and shed a tear on the hardcover. The last sentence of "the God delusion" was read several times, and the Pope declared that morality does not come from God.

The professor lost his tenure and was executed by Hume's guillotine the next day.

The brave student's name? Sam Harris.

It wasn't a debate.

hi every1 im new!!!!!!! holds up nuke my name is sam but u can call me t3h a1heIst oF d00m!!!!!!!! lol…as u can see im very rational!!!! thats why i came here, 2 meet rational ppl like me _… im 49 years old (im mature 4 my age tho!!) i like 2 write ab0ut nuking muslims w/ my girlfreind (im a philosopher if u dont like it deal w/it) its our favourite form of racism !!! bcuz its SOOOO rational!!!! shes rational 2 of course but i want 2 meet more rational ppl =) like they say the more the merrier!!!! lol…neways i hope 2 profile alot of brown people here so give me lots of commentses!!!! ISLAAAAAAAAAM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

it is lengthy and i have work to do, but let me outline some criticism here:

to give science the ultimate interpretive authority about the nature of consciousness and reality neglects, that mathematics is a language just like any other.
to believe that moral judgements can be scientifically based in some kind of neo utilitarianism is therefore shortsighted.
how is it possible to claim, that science, which is based on axioms of number theory etc is in any way more true than a priori phenemenlogical facts like "i am conscious" and "i can exert free will power to a certain extent"
i claim this is simply hubris.
"sniff": in some kind of dialectical turn from aristotles: "i know that i dont know" we have come to "but science knows, however science is just another virtual big other supposed to know." so i claim we should come full circle and accept the fact "i know, that i cannot know. some questions are irreducible"
beyond the veil is only what you put there.

>If you define 'flourishing' and 'well-being' as material comfort and success

No, the scope doesn't in the slightest have to be that narrow for science to significantly inform the issues of well-being and flourishing.

Okay. Elaborate.

wow

hi Sam im new 2!!!!!!! holds up Monocle my name is Julius Evola but u can call me t3h T1GeR oF mYsTicISM!!!!!!!! lol…as u can see im very fascist!!!! thats why i came here, 2 meet political ppl like me _… im like a 100 years old (im young 4 my age tho!!) i like 2 watch fascist invaders w/ my paintings (im artsy if u dont like it deal w/it) its my favorite!!! bcuz its SOOOO political!!!! Theyer random 2 of course Iwant 2 meet more political ppl ----->(o_.)

?????

How does science significantly inform questions of human flourishing and well-being without reframing the question into terms of material quality of life?

The issue isn't "does" science, the issue is if science "can" in principle. What do you even mean when you say "material quality of life"?

Neuroscience and psychology can quantify what brings meaning, purpose, satisfaction, and contentedness to people's lives, and what circumstances, techniques, lifestyles, and so forth best lead to those outcomes.

That in principle doesn't depend solely on "material comfort and success" as the user claimed. It can be a factor, but hardly the sole factor.

There isn't any reason principle that science can't identify social feature X as objectively harmful in that it increases pathology and incurs a net reduction in life satisfaction and then implementing solution A to modulate that social feature. Likewise with religio-social feature Z and determining that it has beneficial outcomes.

We already do this with mental illness and you don't go around questioning whether a neurotic schizophrenic would be better off shitting himself in a corner and whether we ought to be treating him.

kek all well-being and flourishing is reducible apparent features of the brain and the environment, and so are necessarily the domain of science. You can romanticize about human nature all you want, but it doesn't change anything.

Well-being and flourishing are as mechanical as the body. We removed spooky thinking from medicine when idiots like you were saying we ought not to intervene in God's divine plan of deciding who gets sick and dies.

Give a solid definition of well-being and flourishing that we are rationally justified in accepting that is necessarily out of bounds for science to help inform us about. Protip: you fucking can't.

I don't like Harris because he moves around too much. I wish he'd ben stiller

You seem to be making my point for me. So long as you have the parameters and obective defined ahead of time, science can give you all types of 'hypothetical imperatives' that, if headed, will probably aid one in attaining one's goals. I'm not disputing that. What I'm trying to get at is that science does not possess the means to decide the parameters and objectives without begging the question at the more primordial level--that is, without presupposing the content of 'contentedness', or 'meaning', or 'purpose'.

For example, what is neuroscience's answer to a question like 'what is the *best way* to spend my life?'. I'm not saying an answer can't be provided, just that it is not obvious that that is the 'objectively right' answer, as it is not necessarily an question about 'the world', which might be verified, but about how I should act in it, which is both modal and evaluative, and therefore empirically unverifiable in principle.

What makes well being important? Your spooks?

You aren't understanding my objection--which is fair, because I don't think I'm articulating it very well. But here's another attempt:

lol of course one could argue about treating neurotic schizophrenics. there is nothing ojective about psychiatry, instead it is historically contingent like any other (social) science and depends on our discurse and power practice (foucault).
additionally social feature X can be desirable for one individual and produces fear and disgust in the other.
you do realize, that we inhabit narratives we tell to ourselves that are symbolic and contingent and not necessarily based on reality?
at best they are ideologically distorted representations or more so simple fictions.

i have no words user. you're the death of language in pun form.

The same thing that makes health preferable to blatant sickness.

Which is what?

>lol of course one could argue about treating neurotic schizophrenics

Okay, please provide an argument to justify not treating a schizophrenic that otherwise can't function and just shits on herself in a corner.

>Ben Stiller's character Samual Harris

My years of ignoring hollywood are doing some good. For, at last I'm proud to be the one clueless on what op is talking about! It may be some dumb (((atheism))) thing, dumbed up tv show, or equally moronic movie.

>additionally social feature X can be desirable for one individual and produces fear and disgust in the other.

Which could in principle be quantified at both an individual and societal level, with its net pros and cons assessed.

>that we inhabit narratives we tell to ourselves that are symbolic and contingent and not necessarily based on reality?

This doesn't remotely detract from the point.

It doesn't matter what you call it, all that matters is that it is there, which it obviously is.

maybe he is a visionary. maybe he has connection to otherworldly realms.
maybe he doesn't even want to be treated.
and even if you treat him, there are many different ways to do so.
maybe take a peek?:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-psychiatry

It's Samurai Harris from Seven Samurai you pleb

To address your example of the schizophrenic:that such a person should be treated, not just by psychiatric means, but in the first place, is an attitude that has been adopted toward that person, and really toward a whole class of people, i.e. 'those with mental illness'. It is not obvious that THAT is the attitude one MUST take towards that class of people, nor is it obvious that *science* is what is actually motivating that attitude.

you see. your enjoyment is socially determined.

of course you could ask people what they enjoy and then go on asking them, if they are receiving this particular enjoyment.
however this would not be at all scientific as the source of their enjoyment cannot be explained, because it is socially constructed and thus there is no "objective" scientific data to measure it except people's opinions.

>Which could in principle be quantified at both an individual and societal level, with its net pros and cons assessed.

it is called grass roots democracy, not science

So morality is self-evident? As if it were endowed in man by god?

You arent doing a very good job of recognizing the axioms in your own reasoning.

> What I'm trying to get at is that science does not possess the means to decide the parameters and objectives without begging the question at the more primordial level--that is, without presupposing the content of 'contentedness', or 'meaning', or 'purpose'.

This isn't a concern of mine any more than wondering whether or not science possesses the means to decide the parameters and objectives without presupposing the content of 'physical health', 'fitness', and 'non-illness'.

>For example

I really don't think your question gets to the heart of what Harris is proposing at all.

>just that it is not obvious that that is the 'objectively right' answer

It seems obvious to me that there are however objectively wrong answers to the question though. Your objection again to me is tantamount to objecting that it is empirically unverifiable in principle whether a person ought to get medical treatment to alleviate a treatable disease and alleviate the burden of said disease.

I'm trying to have a dialogue here, but you're reverting to a style of argumentation that is so common on Veeky Forums and which I find incredibly tedious and counter-productive, so I'm going to step out of this exchange.

what does neuroscience say is the best way to live my life?

>maybe maybe maybe
>nothing of substance

This is why we laugh at continentals.

That aside, fuck you for this shit. My bro is schizophrenic and this type of tumblr-tier bullshit that encourages people like him to go off treatment and derail their lives.

Serious mental illnesses are actual fucking illness you shitface. You are as bad as saying 'hurr maybe your cancer are God's pimples; dey are your sins leaving your body, don't get treated, just pray'

Honestly, go fuck yourself. 99% of anti-psychiatry is complete bullshit, the rest just improves....psychiatry, it doesn't offer a fucking alternative.

Putting a ? behind something doesn't mean it is a legitimate question worth time and consideration.

Questioning whether generally people with serious illnesses are better off being treated is not even worth considering.

Stop trying to talk about things you know nothing about.

>your enjoyment is socially determined.

lol no

>it is called grass roots democracy, not science

This is like saying that quantifying the symptoms of an illness and the effects and side effects of a medicine is grass roots democracy. You are just an idiot bro.

boy, i am not saying, that you shouldnt treat anyone, who is ill. i am just saying, that psychiatry, just like any other science, is human made and that sciences are not objective truths, but social constructs.
that aside, of course modern science has its merits, it is just not the ultimate answer to the nature of reality.

>So morality is self-evident?

No, but well-being and flourishing in the manner of generally minimizing unnecessary and unwanted pain and suffering certainly is.

You are just obfuscating the issue, just as if trying to inanely question the morality of using medicine to treat someone.

>recognizing the axioms

No, I just recognize that some are utterly trivial and deserve not a second thought.

I don't think the dialogue you were trying to raise was even remotely productive nor sensible. I likewise feel it was tedious, so perhaps you your decision to exit is a good move.

> lol no
then why is it, that different people enjoy different things?
because of genetics?

actually the sympoms of an illness are defined in a cooperative intersubjective process by doctors and patients.
if you think modern medicine knows exactly whats going on, then you are mistaken.
trust me, 60% percent of the remedies of modern science havent been explained.
often times doctors prescribe medicine, that has worked in the past, but they actually have no clue how it works.

I find it strange you think this is a serious question that actually gets at what Harris is talking about.

So what? Science establishes functional inter-subjective truths that have the most profound ramifications for us humans. All this hum bug about possibly some ultimate answer to the nature of reality, if such an idea is even coherent, is irrelevant and verging on literal nonsense.

You can keep dreaming up stories that lead nowhere, don't mean anything, and don't result in much, and science will keep barreling ahead actually addressing the issues that humans face.

You're not solving the question of how to live a fulfilling life, for exampl.e You're only concerned with the question of well-being in the light og not-ill. Well, when we have that problem solved (I'm not ill) - then what? What do I do now? How does science step in and help me answer those questions that arise (now that I'm not concerned with illness)?

Is the only real goal worth achieving in life - that my dopamines are always firing? So that I'm always happy? Then I could potentially be contend in a little box with all my neurons going nuts all day.

>actually the sympoms of an illness are defined in a cooperative intersubjective process by

Which is how science works, so if you wanna call that both science and 'grass roots democracy' fine. I have no problem with that aside from the fact that it is utterly redundant.

However you are completely wrong to state it isn't science yet is grass roots democracy.

>then why is it, that different people enjoy different things?

That isn't a valid question, there isn't a 'why'.


People enjoy different things because there are slight differences in the structure and operation of individual brains, which in turn came about from genetic and environmental conditioning.

he BTFO Dan Dennett on free will

if you think, that the challenges, that humanity is facing are scientific ones, then i must disappoint you. the problems humanity faces are on a relationship level. actually science by means of mass media and modern communication is proliferating alienation and therefore is sometimes a part of the problem.

all i am saying, is that science is not so objective after all. it is useful for building applications for a specific purpose, but other than that it has no meaning what so ever.
the primacy of ontology, methaphysics and epistemology belong to philosophy.

>environmental conditioning

Air conditioning is a scientific fact

>if you think, that the challenges, that humanity is facing are scientific ones, then i must disappoint you. the problems humanity faces are on a relationship level. actually science by means of mass media and modern communication is proliferating alienation and therefore is sometimes a part of the problem.
Who do you think science can't solve relationship level problems when you do accredit it with (partly) causing them?

KEK

Have Ben Stiller and Sam Harris ever been photographed together?

Well I suppose it is you and me.

youtube.com/watch?v=xlCPkmb6cuY

*White apologist board.

I don't follow desu.

The whole point is that in principle science can quantify a toolbox of tools that people can use at their disposal to maximize their chance of living a fulfilling life. Over time there is very little stopping science from being able to understand with more precisions leads to an unfilled life and how to avoid it and increase the precision that the toolbox applies to the individual.


As such, the question in principle can in fact be answered. Harris never claimed that science presently can solve the question of how to live a fulfilling life.

>if you think modern medicine knows exactly whats going on

Why bring up stuff that was never said nor even implied?

The challenges that humans are facing have thus far been best tackled with science, full stop. Science continually opens the doors on what relationships are even possible and increases the plausibility of modulating these relationships.

...

A neuroscientist with not even a hobbyist level of philosophy who tries to act like a professional one is the equivalent to a philosopher pretending to be an engineer and wanting to build a bridge.
Since a bridge is a physical object, easy to see, touch and see it's application daily, people are more willing to respect and understand that a non qualified person trying to design and build one is a dangerous and stupid endeavor.
But philosophy is more abstract, and the layman isn't aware of his lack of preparation when the subject isn't easily perceived/experienced. So people aren't as quick to dismiss an absolute retard since they have no idea how to judge a non qualified person with one that is in this area.

>is that science is not so objective after all.

Wow so deep. What does "so objective" even mean? That it is objective until it encroaches on your favored ideology or your free rein to give import to wild speculation? Yes scientific models are just models, but science has still managed to explain more than has been dreamt up in your philosophizing, it has accrued tens of thousands of facts which are coherently explained and organized, what the fuck does your ontology bring to the table?

>not even a hobbyist
>has a B.A. in philosophy

99% of the hacks on this board don't even have B.A.s in philo, are they hobbyists?

Those things might be true but why should I give a shit about what you think without having mentioned anything about Sam Harris or what he thinks? Yawn!

>the problems humanity faces are on a relationship level.
Science easily fixes this. Perfectly compliant, orderly, intelligent and cooperative Chinese CRISPR babies soon.

ITT: smug neckbeard nu-males who have read "literally dozens!" of books and have "seriously" skimmed through SEOP think they are serious philosophers and "totally wreck" Sam Harris despite not giving his books a charitable read.

has any philosopher ever actually proved that causing suffering is bad?

...

what

that's more of a premise than a conclusion laddo

you need to start with some assumptions otherwise you can't argue for anything at all

Continentals are fucking retarded, the thread

>problems of hierarchy, war, exploitation have all succesfully been tackeld with science

i am just saying, that it is derived from axioms. philosophy has produced narratives and theories just like science has.
but where science produces cars and the internet, philosophy can tell us how to live, which values to adhere to and how to set our priorities in life.
all of this science is not able to do

people always tend to conflate exactitude with importance and realness.

in fact because language consists of analogies, Onomatopoeia and metaphors, it is able to convey a lot more meaning than science can, as it is very limited in its expressiveness

It took him 11 fucking years, he just got high in india all that time, it wasn't even interesting ala the doors of perception, which shows clearly in his badly constructed arguments. I doubt his capability of even knowing how to prove something by induction.

Personally I just dismiss him since, as of today, there's no argument he has made which holds whatsoever any value in being discussed (through his points and rhetoric).
No original ideas, no complete thoughts, he just pleases the lowest common denominator. He caters towards the crowd who enjoys winning arguments over actually discussing a subject at hand.
He's the Tom Clancy of philosophy, along with the other 3 great retards.
And I'm not even a continentalfag nor do I disagree with him on every subject. There's simply more and better people to read and hear of.

any serious geneticist will verify that so far nearly all we can say about genes is that they exist and that they are important.
before we can influence the human genome is such ways much water will flow down the rhine

>have all succesfully been tackeld

Translation: despite this being a lit board, I have very poor reading comprehension.

I know English isn't your first language, but that isn't what the comment said. It said "best tackled" as in it has made the largest contribution compared to any other single thing. This was further clarified by expressing that it has opened up more possibilities and made more plausible modulating relationships to solve these issues.

>hilosophy has produced narratives and theories just like science has.

You are equivocating on the meaning of "theories". No they are not "just like" the theories of science.

Jesus Christ post-his Veeky Forums is trash.

>It took him 11 fucking years

Why even lie?

It took him 4 years, he left school after a year then returned after his Indian adventures for the remaining 3 years. He then subsequently got his PhD.

Where did you get the idea he was "just getting high in India" that whole time? What the fuck all does that have to do with anything anyway?


I like how all of this is a giant distraction from the issue, he has a degree in philo. You don't nor do most of the people on this board. Yet he isn't even a hobbyist because you just say so.

Gotcha. See

I find it strange that you seem incapable of answering so straightforward a question.

Do you think the pic represents one of said good points? Because that's stupid.

See how I just handled your dangerous idea? I informed you how stupid you are for it. If you disagreed, we'd debate. If you were determined not to come to an understanding, but to debate forever and insist upon your premise belligerently regardless of what was said to you, that would become apparent quickly and intelligent people would walk away to let you figure out how stupid you are. It's called discourse. And murder is not a part of it.

Ontology is the reason you're not a serf right now senpai.

Samual Harris's ideas arent dangerous, only nonwhites have dangerous ideas. Genocide commited by whites is well intentioned and therefore moral

He's right, physical removal of communists is justified.

>morality is innately bundled up with human wellbeing and flourishing
prove it

Lmao

I thought that quote was edgy, so I googled it to see if it was real; of course, it was, but Harris apparently wrote a blogpost saying it was taken out of context and showing the passage it was in -- but, after reading that, he seems like even MORE of a sociopath, jesus fuck, it's even worse in context.

samharris.org/blog/item/on-the-mechanics-of-defamation

this

>sociopath
define this

Everyone knows that if humanity's goal was to make the world a better place, step one is to eradicate all nonwhites and marxists.

Ethics adresses only conflict of interest xD

Yeah sam harris is quite a guy. He basically has created a strawman of himself so that his opponents cannot attack him.