Haha this guy thinks he has free will!!! LoL!!!

>>9959517
Give me a quick rundown on Sam Harris

>>9959565
pseud normie who, in order to elevate himself to narcissist, grabbed some credentials off the bottom shelf
he later proceeded to rewrite century-old literature so that it could be understood by modern-day philosophy majors

>>9959565
free will doesnt exist because SCIENCE

>>9959565
Jew

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With atheism as my ideology I will now undermine free will because of its religious connotations muhahaha

>>9959874
Do you realise how flattered Harris probably is to be constantly compared to Ben Stiller?

>>9959517
He literally argues that we don't have free will.

>>9959517
I hate this guy.

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>>9959517

Free will exists.

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>>9959587
>pseudo intellectual
>jew

every fucking time

>>9959565

biggest pseudo in the snake oil bussiness

Has a degree in Philosophy but sucks balls at it , got raped in a debate by Craig so hard I cringed

I try not to use an argument like this in debate very often, but Sam Harris is literally dumb.

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>>9959565

>Waking Up
>Project Reason
>ywn come up with titles this pretentious

>>9959592
This for fucks sake. Obviously we can do whatever the fuck we want, there's just simple morals or shall I say standards that divides the sane from the inane.

He's baby's first step into the world of bridging the gap between rationality and spirituality.

Everyone here hates him because it's no longer cool to be an atheist, and he also spoke out against Trump, of which everything that he said has proven true.

>>9961161

no, everyone hates him cause everyone realized how dumb he is

I am an atheist but after watching him debate with WLC I got mad I even trusted him in the first place

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>>9959517
Free Will IS 100% bullshit, though

Last summer I took a book recommendation from (((reddit))) and read Waking Up.

Then, I stopped taking book recommendations from reddit.

>>9959517
Sam Harris is bullshit, but so is free will. It doesn't and can't exist, and doesn't even make sense to exist. I don't know why people would think it does, I can't understand them.

>>9961919
Where's your argument bud

>>9961919
The majority of people are dumb, especially these days.

>>9961941
My argument for the non-existence of X? The lack of good arguments for the existence of X.

>>9961947
You made a claim that free will can't exist, where is your argument my dude

>>9961951
How would it exist?
Besides, we already know that electric impulses build up in the brain before the "self" knows that it will take an action.
That is, the action is decided before the "self" is made aware of the decision, and rationalizes it by insisting it made that decision.

>>9961963
You tell me, you are the one making the claim bruh

>>9961976
>no u

Stop asking me to prove negatives. Prove your positive, that experiment has shown to be wrong.

>>9961986
>prove your positive
what positive, I'm simply asking you why you believe free will can't exist. So far you have given 0 reasons. Cool off and take some time before you reply hotshot

>>9959517
But he doesn't though..

>>9961995
Because any action we take is determined by genetic variables interacting with environmental variables, and this is not what people call "free will".
Because "free will" doesn't fit into the human body without inventing things like "soul" for example.

You are just twisting words to claim a victory since I won't be arsed to write a big detailed response on fucking 4chan for no reason.
Free will as people defined it is tested and isn't real, so it can't exist. Either redefine it to something sensible and compatible with biology, or admit its an outdated pre-genetics concept.

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>>9959517

He's ok.
What is it with the "online community" of "intellectuals" always praising some obscure academic you need to be "in the know" for instead of a more popular voice?

All a bunch of fucking hipsters..

>>9962006
>still not proving shit
wew lad

>>9962009
Sam Harris is a bad "intellectual" to follow, because for the last year he is on a crusade against SJWs and Trump and it poisons all his talks.

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>>9962006
Free will is definitely impossible to test or refute from biology. If that makes it unimportant/illusory for you, it's only because of your prejudices.
But anyway your opinion and mine were "determined" and so is our disagreement and so is this post, and so would be your post or our absence of response. Surely anyone that is not a complete moron realizes that without free will there is no search for truth since all your judgements are "determined" and only true nihilism results. But of course consistency is not "determined" here.
To complete your brainlet signalling, you even manage to insert some materialism (and low-grade at that) into this, which is totally uncalled for in this question.

Brainlets can't into free will. Then free will debate is much more subtle and complex than it initially seems. Like 90% of philosophers agree that there is free will.

>>9962236
But there isn't. Prove me that free will exist.

>>9959592
I fucking love science

>>9962249
Nice try, but fate made you say this.

>>9962236
did you just appeal to a majority
hm

>>9960188
>best comic existental comics ever made
>refuses to acknowledge its exsistence

Free will has nothing to do with determinism. Not the free will that would allow for «moral» responsibility.

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>>9960188
fuckin' saved

>>9961963
>using the libet experiment as evidence that free will doesn't exist

wew lad

>>9959517
Free will is self-evident in the most explicit sense of the word. You literally cannot be conscious and honestly believe that you have no will. It's nonsense. The only explanation I can think of for someone capable of thought claiming that free will doesn't exist is that they are lying for nefarious purposes, or have some bizarre definition of free will that precludes it from existing.

In the case of Harris, I suspect the former, because his very behavior undermines his own stated beliefs. If you do not think that people are capable of making decisions under their own power, but are instead motivated exclusively by historical forces, then you de-facto do not believe that "people" exist as anything more sophisticated than water pouring down a slope. Human consciousness (something else that is self-evident) does not exist as a motivating entity in and of itself, but only as a byproduct of our existence.

If you actually believed this, there would be literally no reason to do anything, much less to try and convince people that free will doesn't exist, you cannot even say "because I want to," because you don't. You didn't decide any such thing, "you" don't exist as anything more than a hologram of consciousness issuing from a machine.

But we do exist. We are all reading this right now, and every person who does so knows that they are conscious and thus that they DO have will, and thus that Harris is manifestly incorrect. The fact that anyone takes this brainlet seriously is astounding. Every action you take and every thought that you think is evidence that his assertion is wrong. The only explanation for his championing of an idea that he cannot fail to know is baseless is that he has ulterior, probably evil motives to do so. And, of course, we know this to be true, as Harris is a Jew.

>>9961161
He predicted that literally nothing bad would happen and that the DNC would implode?
How sagacious of him.

>>9963891
>we know this to be true, as Harris is a Jew.
Yep. Good post, anon. Glad there are people knowledgeable about the jewish problem who have the patience (or more patience than me!) to sift through the material coming out of this new crop of fake jewish intellectuals and deconstruct their motivations.

>>9963891
>Free will is self-evident in the most explicit sense of the word. You literally cannot be conscious and honestly believe that you have no will. It's nonsense.

I mean, just because you aren't aware of what goes on "close to the metal" doesn't mean it isn't there.

>>9963949
Hard Determinism requires me not only to disregard my own self-awareness and my own senses, but to do so to no practical end, so that I can upset some Christians. And not even all Christians, just the non-Calvinists. I don't need this kike's help to do that, and I certainly don't need to sublimate my existence to a non-falsifiable belief in a mechanistic universe to do it.

We don't even need to get into the nature of human consciousness here, the fact that we are self-aware at all is evidence enough of the existence of will, and thus the irrationality of this absurd idea.

>>9959565
>Give me a quick rundown on Sam Harris
Smug fuckwit that uses big words to seem smart, rather than communicate nuance. If somebody likes him, that person is probably a midwit that thinks they are smart.

>>9960045
>He literally argues that we don't have free will.
He may not choose to be a fuckwit, but being such a douche about it is definitely free will.

>>9961161
>Everyone here hates him because it's no longer cool to be an atheist
Naw, I hate him because he uses large words for no reason other than to sound smart to dipshits. Also reminds me of how I used to talk when I was a teenager and hadn't realized the need for translating down in order not to confuse and anger normies.

>>9963891
We have free will in a meme-esque way. We can say yes or no to things to an extent. Do you realize we can't even be GOOD without God's OK. It's quite disheartening.

>>9961919
>but so is free will. It doesn't and can't exist,
At this point there is insufficient evidence to prove that subatomic waves do not choose where to exist as particles, you merely assume they do not. Lacking any real knowledge of the fundamental nature of existence, puny humans claiming they know what is and isn't possible is supremely pathetic. You don't know, and neither do I; I choose what I pay attention to, what thought patterns are more dominate. If you don't think you make choices, you are probably severely lacking in self awareness or mental capacity.

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>>9959565
New atheist who completely went off the rails after Trump got elected.

>>9962009
>He's ok.
He's great, one of our greatest minds, along with geniuses Bill Nye, and Grassy Tyson.

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>>9964057
The jewish response in general to Trump getting elected was lunacy across the board and remains such. The non-jewish liberal merely mimics this outrage because they don't understand that it's jews who are feeding them their opinions through the various jewish-run media outlets.

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>>9964096
>he thinks the other side is any better
Trump is a jewish puppet just like any other president.

>>9964143
deep

>>9962016
fucking drumpf ruined the podcast for me desu

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>>9964150
Ok kid, keep worshipping your "savior".

>>9959517
>he still thinks there are permanent states of existence independent of any perspective

There is free will in the mind that perceives it. You do not exist in the mind that does not perceive you. etc.

>>9962249
>Prove me that free will exist.
I choose not to engage with those lacking awareness of self. I do not believe you exist.

>>9964143
He is much, much less of a jewish puppet and will slow down the race replacement agenda, which is the main thing whites need right now, you kike shill.

>>9964167
>>9962249
>>9962236
congratulations on wasting a lot of words to say nothing, retards

>>9963996
>Hard Determinism requires me not only to disregard my own self-awareness and my own senses
How did I acquire the information that made me disregard my senses, through my senses, of course!

Holy shit at what point will people admit that this guy was an idiot all along and that he should be forgotten in time? He's gotten annihilated in almost every debate he's been in. His 'works' have been ravaged by contemporaries in almost every field he's done 'work' in.

Harris lacks any basic ability in discernment, and lacks altogether any skill in higher reasoning. I would disregard him altogether. This includes his pernicious charlatan cash grab book on free will. See instead, Dennet, or other compatibilists (or anyone who is actually intelligent and creative for that matter)

>>9959517
sam harris is the grown up version of the kid that picked toad in mario kart

>>9964636
w-what's wrong with picking toad?

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>>9964172
>this is what 70 iq white trash burgers actually belive
Nah fuck off. America needs to die, it's a huge cesspool.
I can't belive how many """whites""" there think that they'll ever have a white european country. Not gonna happen kid. America was never european/white from the beginning.
Real europeans will come back to their homeland, there's no future in that international jewish empire.
>inb4 wah wah kike shill! No way I've been lied to all the time! NO NO NO
Probably a 100 times whiter than you buddy.

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>>9964660

>>9964621
What the fuck does that even mean? How am i suppose to derive any use from this post? Surely no man is wrong about everything, what in gods name are you talking about?

>>9959517

Maybe hypnotized

>>9964662
Nice try, jew.

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>>9964663
why does he hate toad so much

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>>9964680
Good argument my 1/16 german brother :^)

>>9964662
We're probably the same amount of white if you're going to try to claim you're 100x whiter. So you think Americans should go back to Europe? That might not be a bad idea, but it's not going to happen anytime soon and your defeatism wrt America is at this point unjustified. I agree America needs to die, though not about the part about it never being white since the concept of "America" is 100% white in every shape, form, and fashion, but if it's going to die it should be ended by the men who created it, white men, and something else should rise in its place.

>>9959517

someone tl;dr to the extent that that's possible why the materialist conception of free will (or really, lack of free will) is wrong

pls no appeal to divinity

i find the materialist conception of free will a force with the potential to depress the human spirit but at the same time i think it's correct t b h

i don't think their post-hoc reasoning is correct though, i.e. we should be throwing people in jail when they do stupid shit and we can't suddenly develop infinite empathy for sociopaths just because they didn't technically will themselves into retarded situations

Free will shouldn't exist.

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>>9960092

>>9964672
It means exactly what the fuck I wrote it means, you idiot. Can you read?

>>9962016

no... hes forever been a pseud

doesnt matter what his shitty opinions on politics are

in the philosophy field he is a farse

hes probabbly a good neuroscientist but thats all

>>9962265

Not and argument.

>>9964726
>hes probabbly a good neuroscientist

not really. he isn't much involved in the design and execution of the experiments he is associated with (which are already quite few in number), he just helps write up the papers for publication

>>9964032
If you think those choices are free you are probably severely lacking in self awareness or mental capacity.

You cant prove you ever had a choice other than the one that was made.

>>9964712
Determinists still think you should throw criminals into jail to prevent further harm. They just think rehabilitation should be the focus, since retribution doesn't make a whole lot of sense if people are doomed to their crimes because of genetics / environment.

>>9964791

>Determinists think
>They think

Sure?

>>9964791
My compatibilist professor doesn't rule out determinism but also believes that we shouldn't autistically develop infinite empathy in the face of it as it'd probably ruin society as we know it. It's kind of a cop-out position.

>>9964800
Yes

>>9964806
Don't know where you're getting this infinite empathy idea from. In much the same way we view bears or sharks, we'd treat extreme criminals as a kind of killing machine.

It's also worth pointing out that having empathy doesn't necessarily mean you have sympathy. Sun Tzu recommended you be able to empathize with your enemy to understand them.

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Humans are predictable just like any other animal.

>>9959587

how do you elevate yourself to a narcissist when being one is the lowest form of self possible in a human being

you literally stop being a productive human being and your ego is crushed under the weight of your own false self, useless and inert

>>9959565
he thinks morality is objective because.... suffering is bad or something

>>9964778
I can by making a choice in the present moment.

>>9962249
u chose to make a stupid fuking post u reditor

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>>9964719

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>>9964872
you sound like someone who will be remembered.

>>9959517
>Sam Harris Is A Fraud

>In 2004 Sam Harris published his bestselling book “The End of Faith”. In the aftermath of 9/11, the declaration of the War on Terror and the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, Harris’ book hit the mark with middle class liberals. It argued that Muslims are driven to violent actions by their violent religion. Even moderate Muslims harbour dangerous and savage thoughts that make them an enemy within. He makes a few passing philosophical remarks that dazzle lay readers into buying Harris’ personal moral code – we should be willing to fight these irrational, dangerous people in order to protect Western liberal values: secularism, reason, progress. The book marked the beginning of a long and fruitful media and publishing career for Harris, who has now become a leading figure in the New Atheist movement, and one of its Four Horsemen.

>Unlike the other Horsemen, Sam Harris has no pre-existing career worth mentioning. Dan Dennett is an accomplished philosopher and writer. Richard Dawkins built his atheism promotion out of his mediocre but well publicised science writing. Christopher Hitchens was a scumbag, but he was at least a successful writer. To believe Harris’ own hype, you’d think he was some kind of amalgamation of all three of these people: a neuroscientist and philosopher, the most potent Horseman of all.

>Yet Harris’ claims about his intellectual bona fides are all a fraud. Sam Harris is no neuroscientist, nor is he a philosopher. Harris’ success has not been built on his abilities in either discipline. It has been built on his parents’ wealth, his connections, and a media and audience lusting after the kind of warmongering-but-liberal calls to action that he spouts, touched up with a veneer of intellectual credibility.

>Behind every media darling is a pair of rich, indulgent parents, and Sam Harris is no exception. His parents, both former TV stars and producers, footed the bill for Stanford, and then a string of New Age spiritual retreats once little Sam decided to drop out of Stanford.

>>9965153
>In an interview back in 2006 Harris mentions in passing that “at the time, he was supported financially by his mother”. As well as his family’s lavish support, connections were already developing, as he managed to swing a job in a “security detail” for the Dalai Lama. Being the child of highly connected and wealthy TV heavyweights certainly has its benefits, though what type of security a 19-year old Stanford trustafarian dropout was providing is beyond me.

>Sam’s real passion during this time was philosophy. His spiritual guide at the time remarked later that:
"His passion was for deep philosophical questions, and he could talk for hours and hours," Salzberg recalls. "Sometimes you'd want to say to him, 'What about the Yankees?' or 'Look at the leaves, they're changing color!' "

>Already developing his trademark narcissistic and computer-like style of discussion, Sam was compelled to indulge himself in further study. According to the same interview, after re-enrolling and completing his diploma, Sam began writing at length about his philosophical views: “but nothing was published.” Whatever Sam was producing at this stage, it wasn’t of any interest to actual philosophers. The best way to get around this problem was to bypass them and publish for a lay audience, and thankfully for Sam this wasn’t an insurmountable problem: coming from a TV family he had already developed the ability to find an audience – rubes who will buy what you’re selling.

>After spending his 20s in some kind of haze of middle class ennui searching for spiritual truth Sam finally found the more fundamental, bourgeois truth: New Age spiritualism has nothing on getting filthy rich and famous. The essays he had tried to send off to philosophy journals for publications were later amalgamated into material for “The End of Faith”, and its publication opened up a whole new world of connections and media attention.

>In 2004, after the success of “The End of Faith”, Harris was introduced to David Samuels, media heavyweight, who lauded him as the next Voltaire. The friend who introduced Harris to Samuels? A mysterious “writer for the Simpsons”. Atheists and libertarians began crawling out of the woodwork to latch onto this rising star. The connections begin to come thick and fast. In more recent years Harris has found equal success in enlisting the support of New Atheists like Dan Dennett & Richard Dawkins.

>>9965159
>At this same juncture in his life Sam decided to dive into the world of neuroscience, and what a career move it turned out to be. For the broader middle class yokelry who fawn over Sam, it gives him some kind of insight into the “inner workings of the mind”, which neuroscience does not actually involve. A small aside, let me tell you what neuroscientists do: data entry. The neuroscientist title turns out to be a lie, a bit of performance art from an accomplished performer. It’s true that Harris completed a PhD in neuroscience, yet the story of how he got this qualification casts some doubt on his bona fides as a so called “neuroscientist”.

>Harris’ desire to sleaze his way through a doctorate in neuroscience in particular was motivated by his instincts as an arch-careerist. “The End of Faith” was already on the shelves – he was already a Somebody in the public sphere, and he already had a topic that he knew would play. His PhD would investigate the differences in brain activity between Christians and non-Christian people when asked various factual or non-factual questions. The goal was to find some kind of neurological correlate of religiosity, showing how religious people think less rationally than atheists. He could then use this as a stick to beat religious people – presumably Muslims – with: “your brains work differently to ours”. These findings would tie everything up in a neat bow: Muslims are irrational and crazy, and here are the brain scans to prove it! Fortunately for Sam, and unfortunately for the credibility of neuroscientists generally, it’s pretty easy to produce whatever results you like with a little bit of methodological tilting of the scales.

>Two equally interesting questions arise from the tale of Sam’s PhD thesis. Firstly, where did he get the money? MRI machines are expensive pieces of equipment, and are often rented for short periods at great expense. By now we should be able to guess the answer: Sam naturally had this covered through personal wealth and connections. Right around the time he was beginning his thesis Harris founded “The Reason Project”, later to become “Project Reason”, a “charitable foundation devoted to spreading scientific knowledge and secular values in society”. The Reason Project was apparently feeling particularly charitable about Sam, and provided the funds for his PhD, including use of facilities and an MRI machine. Once again, mum to the rescue.

>>9965164
>The second problem was potentially more difficult. Sam had no history in neuroscience and he had never conducted an experiment in his life. It’s hard to imagine the UCLA neuroscience department accepting his PhD proposal, until you remember that Sam was by this stage highly connected, filthy rich, and becoming famous. He was given the red carpet treatment by UCLA. Sam got to pretend to do science while the professionals got to work. The various research jobs were passed to his co-authors: conducting the experiments, recruiting participants and designing the entire study were taken off Little Lord Fauntleroy’s hands. Ultimately Sam’s sole responsibility was the final write-up, which is less the account of a scientific experiment and more a screed about his personal views on religion, and a narcissistic flexing of his intellectual cred.

>From the introduction:
“While there may be many Catholics, for instance, who value the ritual of the Mass without actually believing the doctrine of Transubstantiation, the primacy of the Mass within the Church still hinges on the fact that many Catholics do accept it as a metaphysical truth—a fact that can be directly attributed to specific, doctrinal claims that are still put forward by the Church.”

>First of all, that’s not what “metaphysical” means, and secondly, what does this have to do with a behavioural fMRI study?
“Indeed, humanity seems to becoming proportionally more religious, as the combination of material advancement and secularism is strongly correlated with decreased fertility . When one considers the rise of Islamism throughout the Muslim world, the spread of Pentecostalism throughout Africa, and the anomalous piety of the United States, it becomes clear that religion will have geopolitical consequences well into the 21st century.”

>>9965168
>Again, is this neuroscience or Sam’s new blog post?

>The PhD predictably ended up a huge mess seeing how its lead author, Sam, was not a scientist but rather an anti-religious ideologue with no idea about how to design a study of this kind. Plenty of scientists during this period were swept up by the excitement of probing the activity in people’s brains to locate the regions or areas responsible for different mental behaviours. The emerging field of fMRI seemed to give us a special insight into the mind, but the methods involved are often rudimentary or extremely questionable.

>Participants are routinely asked to “do nothing” or “think about nothing” while their “baseline” brain activity is recorded by the MRI machine. This baseline is then compared against their results during the experimental task, often in a very crude way. Researchers will simply subtract the baseline activation from the task activation, assuming that this will leave them with only the task activation, removing all the background noise. Researchers also frequently use mathematical tweaking to produce results that look good on a “heat map” by removing data that are “noisy” and don’t cluster neatly on the hotspots of activation.

>In one famous example of the flaws of fMRIs, researchers used a dead salmon as their fMRI subject. The salmon was shown a series of images of various human social situations, designed to evoke an emotional response. The researchers found that, using the standard methods employed by neuroscientists and psychologists, the dead salmon responded to the images, illustrating the insanely high false-positive rate of fMRI research.

>On a deeper theoretical level, it is rarely assumed anymore that discrete brain regions “do” any particular task. More and more evidence is emerging that distributed networks, graphical and topological features of the whole brain, and other kinds of non-localizable processes are what actually drive our mental life.

>>9965175
>Harris’ research manages to hit every single note of bad neuroscience design, and reveals an ignorance of theoretical issues on the part of the scientists involved. The statistician William Briggs, having studied the thesis, points to numerous flaws in its design. The researchers recruited a hugely biased population sample that skewed their data, and did not record whether the non-Christian participants were Muslims, Atheists, Buddhist, or whatever else (I guess the folks round Stanford are white enough to rule other religions out). They also didn’t include the details of the questions asked, and we simply have to assume that the questions were valid. Harris’ team also discarded data that did not suit their desired results: 7 out of 40 participants were not included in the results “because their responses to our experimental stimuli indicated that they did not actually meet the criteria for inclusion in our study as either nonbelievers or committed Christians”. How was this decided? They never say. In addition, since some participants didn’t answer consistently enough according to Sam’s reckoning he excluded “subjects who could not consistently respond “true” or “false” with conviction.”

>Briggs summarises:
“During the course of my investigation of scientism and bad science, I have read a great many bad, poorly reasoned papers. This one might not be the worst, but it deserves a prize for mangling the largest number of things simultaneously.”

>Yet the thesis was accepted and Sam received his PhD anyway. Doubtless the connection to his thesis supervisor Mark S. Cohen, a pioneer in MRI scanning techniques, helped carry him over the line. And thus Sam, a man who knows virtually nothing about neuroscience, who has never conducted or designed an experiment, is the proud holder of a PhD.

>Recent research on the flaws of fMRI techniques has often used theses like Sam’s as a punching bag. A 2016 paper “Cluster failure: Why fMRI inferences for spatial extent have inflated false-positive rates” provides some convincing evidence, perhaps even more convincing than the salmon, that fMRI data is often misleading or useless, which was picked up in an article in the New York Times. Harris’ supervisor, Mark S. Cohen, responded at length to the charges, but the best he seemed to do was a small act of pedantry, correcting the article author for putting full-stops in the acronym fMRI. Later on Cohen concedes that maybe scientists got a little excited about the possibilities of fMRI:
“… scientists share the same foibles as all people: we are biased by our own beliefs and by our desire for recognition. Nothing, and certainly not statistics, can really protect us from this enthusiasm.”

>>9965177
>You said it Mark. Where was this clear-headedness when you were watching Sam cut half the participants from the study based on a gut feeling?

>So Sam’s thesis and the papers he’s been publishing based on it since demonstrate his novice-level understanding of neuroscience and experimental work in general. The nerds who revere his science-cred should bear in mind what an act of fraud it is for this man to call himself a scientist of any kind. Putting “neuroscientist” on the sleeve of his books is like calling the 9/11 attackers aerial stuntmen – he tried his hand at it once and it ended in disaster.

>But neuroscience was just one string in Sam’s bow. His passion, as we’ve noted, was originally philosophy. While he has dabbled in philosophy of mind and sometimes parrots the positions of his friend Dennett, Sam is primarily interested in religion and moral philosophy. “The End of Faith” launched a vicious attack on religion in general, but particularly Islam. There are plenty of other articles running through the pathetic and nasty bile that Sam levels at Muslims on the regular, and I’ll focus instead on the weakness of his philosophy, and the lame techniques he uses to fool unsuspecting readers into agreeing with his nonsensical arguments.

>A sure sign of Sam’s intellectual prowess comes in the opening pages of his book:
“The young man boards the bus as it leaves the terminal. He wears an overcoat. Beneath his overcoat, he is wearing a bomb…The young man smiles. With the press of a button he destroys himself, the couple at his side, and twenty others on the bus…The young man’s parents soon learn of his fate….They knows that he has gone to heaven and prepared the way for them to follow…These are the facts…”

>So far it reads like a spy novel written by a computer program. But soon we reach the grim conclusion...
“Why is it so easy…to guess the young man’s religion?”

>>9965178
>Dun dun duuuuun! If your average middle class American yokel who picked this book up in 2004 thinks that Muslims are violent, well, it’s got to be true!

>The most impressively deceitful line is “These are the facts”. Never mind that these supposed “facts” are drawn from Sam’s imagination and placed into this heavily contrived scenario that never happened in real life. They’re as good as real facts so long as they appeal to the intuitions of the reader, and give the illusion of opening your eyes to the hidden evidence of Muslim evil.

>A central theme running through Harris’ work on religion is that he considers himself an expert on the inner workings of the Muslim mind – a qualified Muslim Whisperer. The Muslim Whisperer understands the Muslim – what does he want, what does he think about, what drives his actions? Normal Westerners are unable to understand Muslims in all their savagery, but luckily the self-proclaimed scholar of Islamic psychology Sam is here to fill in the gaps:
“Why did nineteen well-educated, middle-class men trade their lives in this world for the privilege of killing thousands of our neighbours? Because they believed that they would go straight to paradise for doing so. It is rare to find the behaviour of human beings so fully and satisfactorily explained. Why have we been reluctant to accept this explanation?”

>Get your chin scratching finger ready. Where did Sam get this exhaustive explanation of the 9/11 hijackers’ psychology? We will never know – the Muslim Whisperer keeps these things to himself. He just knows, and if he says it confidently enough and it agrees with the readers’ intuitions then it’ll be accepted as truth.

>>9965182
>Sam has a list of divinations about Muslims: “Muslims hate the West in the very terms of their faith”. He knows that they are all devoted to “the literal word of the Koran”, they believe “modernity and secular culture are incompatible with moral and spiritual health”, and most damningly “the reality that the West currently enjoys far more wealth and temporal power than any nation under Islam is viewed by devout Muslims as a diabolical perversity” The average Muslim man “…will feel that the eternal happiness of his children is put in peril by the mere presence of such unbelievers in the world”. As someone who, unlike Sam, regularly talks to people of Muslim faith, I find his insights pretty surprising. Little did I know that hidden behind the façade of everyday life was a seething, roiling mass of black hatred for me and everything I stand for.
“All are in perverse agreement on one point of fundamental importance, however: “respect” for other faiths, or for the faiths of unbelievers, is not an attitude that God endorses.”

>If Sam had bothered to speak to a Muslim person he’d find that virtually all of them regard Christianity and Judaism as related faiths. Jesus was a prophet much like Mohammed, and Christianity is incomplete but basically acceptable. The number of mixed-faith marriages and relationships I’m acquainted with also seems to put the lie to Sam’s credibility as a Muslim Whisperer – then again, maybe Australia is just a bubble of religious tolerance, where people leave Muslims alone and don’t attack them or their sites of worship.

>But Sam thinks that Muslim people’s beliefs shouldn’t be taken at face value, unless they support his arguments. He claims that ” one of the problems we have is that many Muslims, for understandable reasons and some for really deplorable reasons, are playing hide the ball with the articles of faith, and are eager to have the conversations of the sort you have had from a very cynical and manipulative perspective.” A-ha! Only a true Muslim Whisperer could identify such a thickly woven conspiracy. Muslims are “playing hide the ball” – is that a game you learned at spirit camp Sam? – with their true beliefs. While they may marry Christians and atheists and Jews and act like normal people, what they really want is chaos and war with the West.

>>9965187
>Sam has more recently dabbled in the broader topic of moral philosophy. His 2010 book “The Moral Landscape” puts forward what he grandiosely calls an entire framework for thinking about morality. Harris argues that decisions that produce the greater happiness or comfort are “better” decisions. Hence we can live a “better” life by acting as utilitarians, trying to maximize happiness and minimize misery by our actions. Right from the start he fumbles basic terms of his debate. A strategically “good” decision that leads to the best possible outcome is not the same as a “good” decision morally. We could make a good move in chess, but this doesn’t say anything about whether this would be a good decision to make morally.

>This book has spawned a devout internet following of extremely credulous believers, and either indifference or criticism from proper philosophers. The philosopher Thomas Nagel pigeon-holes Harris’ philosophical efforts: “Since Harris skips over the hard substantive questions of right and wrong that occupy moral philosophers, the book is too crude to be of interest as a contribution to moral theory.” In other words, stick to your day job.

>Patricia Churchland hits the nail on the head when it comes to Sam’s approach to philosophy:
“I think Sam is just a child when it comes to addressing morality. I think he hasn’t got a clue. And I think part of the reason that he kind of ran amuck on all this is that, as you and I well know, trashing religion is like shooting fish in a barrel. If Chris Hitchens can just sort of slap it off in an afternoon then any moderately sensible person can do the same… Morality: how hard can that be? Religion was dead easy. And it’s just many orders of magnitude more difficult.”

>>9965189
>The ease of Sam’s life has led him to thinking that philosophy and debate is just as easy as schmoozing your way into the media. He breezed into college, writing, science. While it’s straightforward enough to fool a bunch of liberals with anti-Muslim drivel, get the ear of publishers, and even fool some bumbling scientists, doing serious writing in philosophy requires you to make strong arguments and know what you’re talking about. Sam has never published an article in any peer reviewed philosophical journal. This above all things demonstrates the weakness of his philosophy.

>The most difficult part of getting published is proving that you have something original to say – something even professional philosophers sometimes have trouble doing. Sam’s moral philosophy rehashes ancient positions on utilitarianism, and only innovates by tortuously suggesting that utilitarianism provides a means for neuroscience to answer moral questions. As we know, Sam isn’t the best person to take advice from when it comes to neuroscience. Sam Harris is neither a philosopher nor a neuroscientist. Sam Harris is a media showboat, a layabout, a spoiled and well-connected rich kid with a high opinion of his own profoundness.

>Sam’s heavily controlled public image would be the envy of other careerists. Philosopher, neuroscientist, expert of morality and religion. He’s even got a signature self-portrait: the dead-on photograph which makes him look like a body laid out on a morgue, fixed with a vaguely shit-eating grin. He picked this photograph because it suggests openness, forwardness, honesty, none of that limp liberal handwringing about PC. The public intellectual label, however, carries with it the possibility of debate, which Sam seems to approach with excitement which typically turns to pettiness, anger and rejection once the easy victory he was hoping for fails to materialise.

>Sam’s debates with other thinkers have revealed how poor a combatant he is when actually faced with adversity or conflict, with anything other than comfort and ease. Forced to directly provoke an encounter by email after years of being snubbed, Harris managed to contact Noam Chomsky and challenge him to a debate. His sparring with even as mediocre a person as Chomsky demonstrates just how much of a poser Harris is.

>>9965192
>For starters the page on Sam’s website hosting the debate transcript is called “The Limits of Discourse”, in his classic faux-Spock style of superior delivery. I understand the limits of discourse better than this guy, Sam is hinting narcissistically. In fact everything he does is narcissistic and tacky. The picture accompanying the piece is a brick wall. What a lame, passive-aggressive way to shit-talk your opponent. Classic careerist, classic narcissist, classic Harris.

>He reminds Chomsky pre-debate that “It’s not a matter of having a “debate about misreadings”; it’s a matter of allowing our readers to see that conversation on difficult and polarizing topics can occasionally fulfill its ostensible purpose.” This kind of petulant uber-liberalism endears Sam to the kind of people who watch the West Wing – we can rise above it all, we can disagree but still be civil at the end of the day. This is the height of insincerity, since Sam’s entire goal here as evidenced by the way he presents the debate now is to show how Chomsky is at the “limits of discourse” and simply can’t be reasoned with, even making up the word “unreason” to describe Chomsky’s stance. It’s about showing off his cred, but Sam bites off more than he can chew. It’s like the coward who picks a fight with an old bum only to get his teeth smashed in with a trash can lid.

>Harris commences the debate with a lengthy, pre-written essay that made me feel a pang of pity for him. He was so keen for the debate that he came all prepared. With the laziness of a spoiled brat Harris criticises Chomksy without every bothering to quote or make reference to a particular argument Chomsky has made. Instead, Harris quotes Baudrillard to pump up his cred as an intellectual. He criticises very broadly Chomsky’s claims about US imperialism being the cause of terrorism, and its posturing as “well-intentioned giant” that pretends to only inflict global death and horror unintentionally.
“We have surely done some terrible things in the past. Undoubtedly, we are poised to do terrible things in the future. Nothing I have written in this book should be construed as a denial of these facts, or as defense of state practices that are manifestly abhorrent. There may be much that Western powers, and the United States in particular, should pay reparations for.”

>At the end of the day though, “we are, in many respects, just such a “well-intentioned giant.””

>>9965194
>Let’s unpack this lazy argument: Chomsky has alleged in the past that the USA is at least partially responsible for the rise of Islamic jihad due to its imperial warmongering in the Middle East. Harris responds with a characteristic hand-wave – sure we’ve done bad stuff, but that doesn’t excuse terrorism! Is it possible to miss a simpler point by a wider margin? Chomsky’s purpose here is to show how US foreign policy is the cause of terrorism, not coincidental to it, yet Harris somehow construes this as the claim that US imperialism is just as bad as terrorism, so we can’t criticise terrorism. For someone so apparently concerned about quality debate and discourse, Harris functions at the level of a high-school debater, unable to do anything but talk past his opponent.

>When gentle rhetorical pressure is applied by Chomsky, Harris fumbles basic philosophical concepts – misunderstanding simple claims within Chomsky’s arguments, making bizarre and barely coherent use of the concept of “moral equivalence”, and then quickly denigrating the entire exercise as “going off into the weeds” once he is put on the back foot. It is in every way an extremely weak performance from a man who portrays himself as a “public intellectual”.

>Eventually Sam cuts off the exchange in typical style, citing some vague and self-serving concerns about the quality of the discourse:
“I’m sorry to say that I have now lost hope that we can communicate effectively in this medium. Rather than explore these issues with genuine interest and civility, you seem committed to litigating all points (both real and imagined) in the most plodding and accusatory way. And so, to my amazement, I find that the only conversation you and I are likely to ever have has grown too tedious to continue.”

>Does this guy have abandonment issues or something? “The only conversation you and I are likely to ever have”? Is he trying to criticise Chomsky or be his absentee father? In classic Sam Harris style he avoids an unpleasant confrontation that could damage his precious image by appointing himself the arbiter of what makes good debate, what makes for high-level discussions.

>>9965198
>In another shameful display, Harris challenged the writer Omer Aziz to a debate after a hit-piece Aziz had published in Salon attacking him. Harris, clearly enraged, but with Quaker-like passive-aggressive composure, tried to invite Aziz to a weird bullying session:
“I’d like you to just read , line by line, and I’ll stop you at various points so that we can discuss specific issues.”

>Not a debate, not a discussion, not his beloved “discourse”, but a self-criticism session where Aziz would have to sit there and be excoriated by Harris for as long as he deemed necessary. The Spock mask slipped for just a moment, revealing the narcissistic urge to defend his projected image as violently as he could. Sam still tried to make it seem like he wasn’t just defending himself, but instead the very ideal of public discourse, decency, and all that:
“I want to hold you accountable for every word in your essay. You took the time to write it, and nearly every sentence exemplifies what is wrong with our public conversation on these topics.”

>The arbiter of debate would not relent from this proposal, and Aziz eventually accepted, but Harris’ proposed format quickly broke down and turned into a free-ranging debate that lasted apparently for four hours. I don’t think I could last four minutes before swallowing my own tongue in that context, so full credit to Omer Aziz for his will of iron. Afterwards, Harris abruptly refused to post the debate online, claiming that it wasn’t interesting enough (though it has since been released). He signed off to Aziz:
“Better luck next time…
Sam”

>>9965201
>And yet in spite of his love of censorship and utter failure in any unscripted debate Harris’ media friends crow that he is “the new Voltaire”. The new Voltaire! Hold that description in your mind while you read this passage from “The End of Faith”:
“What does it feel like to see three thousand men, women and children incinerated and crushed to ash in a span of a few seconds…to have watched the World Trade Center absorbing the jet planes, along with the lives of thousands, and to have felt, above all things, disbelief, suggests some form of neurological impairment. Clearly, there are limits to what the human mind can make of the deliverances of its senses…”

>As Mark Ames once said, I hope you’ve got your chin-scratching oil ready.

>When ambushed by Ben Affleck on the Bill Maher Show, Harris was taken aback, his usually couched style unprepared for an actual human being tearing into him for being a racist fraud. Affleck accused him of being a racist, and Harris could only lamely write after the fact that “I suspect that among his handlers there is a fan of Glenn Greenwald who prepared him for his appearance by simply telling him that I am a racist and a warmonger.” Greenwald, who wrote a criticism of the New Atheist movement and accused it of being fundamentally reactionary and war-hungry, is Harris’ Goldstein, the eternal enemy who pops up in his dreams to torment him.

>For all his talk, Sam’s real fears when faced with criticism are manifestly not to do with the effects that debate have upon the world. Conversely, he seems to believe that criticisms of him are secretly attacks on his person – or directed by the malign spectre of Glenn Greenwald. He responds to criticism with vitriol, claims that every critic simply doesn’t understand his arguments, and attempts to bully and demean his opponents. Despite the dull Quaker image he presents of a public intellectual concerned only with creating quality discussions in the public sphere, in truth this means that anyone who disagrees with Sam is irrational, misguided or malicious; to be treated with scorn and suspicion.

>>9965202
>Aside from his sensitive narcissism surrounding his self-image of the Enlightenment man, Sam’s second-biggest fear is that staunch criticism of his arguments will ruin his not-so-hard-earned career, and affect his income. This was best captured by the blogger at Shadow to Light, who listened to Harris’ interview with Omar Aziz.
“At 33:40, he complains that accusations of him being racist are closing off other opportunities for him to make money, at 34:00 he clearly states that being called a bigot and racist isn’t good for his career (and his “career” is to sell books and get paid for speeches), at 38:30 he complains about the “cost” of dealing with this issue, from 38:40 to 39:30 he makes it clear accusations of racism/bigotry interfered with his ability to promote his meditation book, and at 43:15 he complains about the “reputational costs” associated with such accusations”

>For someone supposedly concerned with the highest principles, in truth Sam is concerned only with the basest ones: making money, and the image he projects to his gormless fans.

>>9961161
i hate him because he believes you can derive an ought from an is, the sheer amount of holes in his philosophy he hides behind vague language, and he's one of those guys that has to make things into an argument and then win the argument.

DUDE BUDDHISM LMAO tho

>>9964032
>At this point there is insufficient evidence to prove that subatomic waves do not choose where to exist as particles, you merely assume they do not.

That would be subatomic waves having free will, not "you".
In fact, not only do "you" not have free will, there is no "you".

>>9962319
He's gone to shit a long time ago, just take a look at his facebook account and the amount of retarded statuses.

>>9964950
Morality is objective. But it is because God made it so.

>>9965578
>god

Who?

If volitional action comes from unconscious processes, what's the purpose of the conscious mind? Is it just there to observe our body as it moves along space and time? Then it's ultimately useless since it can't inform our behaviour.

Harris makes the claim that your will is never free from the train of cause and effect thus free will doesn't make sense. Yet he also claims that choices matter, that you MUST choose to perform an action (albeit based on a limited number of choices). But how can this be? If you don't have a stake in the next sequence of events, how do you then CHOOSE to do something? You clearly have no choice if it's already decided by forces outside of our conscious mind yet he insists that choice is a real thing.

And if everything is determined, doesn't it necessarily mean that fatalism must also be true? The domino pieces must fall one way mustn't it?

It seems to me that determinism has many holes in itself and seems paradoxical. It's still an open question among philosophers and neuroscientists but Harris tells us that it's settled on both fronts and that he's right.

>>9960188
>(Sam Harris's power is lightning or something)

This always cracks me up.

>>9965192
>even as mediocre a person as Chomsky

Ok, I'm agreeing with most of this shit, but this isn't doing any favors for it.

>cntrl+f jew
>15 results

ITT: A bunch of butthurt neo-leftists, pseudo-intellectual posers and religious fools.

>>9959592
Refute his points because satire

He's a stupid person's idea of what a smart person is like. Simple.

This sums it up, really: http://www.poleandpaddy.com/when-contrarians-become-the-rear-guard-why-new-atheism-is-still-terrible/

>None of the above, however, is as slimy and smug as the Ben Stiller look-alike. No one else encapsulates the unsettling ideological overlap between American liberals and the traditional far-right quite like Harris. (Wasn’t it he who claimed Europe’s fascists were the most clear-headed about immigration policy?) His talking point is this: religion is thought crime of the highest order.

>Despite this he somehow manages to maintain a love affair with Buddhism. It may be imperfect but its principles and teachings, Harris drones, correlate strongly with the objective innate moral system he both claims to have uncovered and adhere to (details of which can be found in The Moral Landscape, available at fine book stores across Seculardom). This unusual admiration aligns with his abandonment of logic in claiming that mind and body are non-dependant entities (this view is something neuroscientists, among others, have thoroughly discredited, so surely he knows this?). And perhaps plays a role in his excursion into realms normally associated with New Age yah-yah types, when he argues that a metaphorical society whose only reading material is Buddhist texts – as opposed to the actual ones clogging up the Himalayas – would be a peaceful, enlightened one. A stranded group granted nothing other than Islamic texts however, would degenerate into a savage death cult within the same time it would take Sam’s buds to occupy Rousseau’s dreamscape.

>>9966136
This is just strawman and adhom though.

>>9965578
What if you are God? Then it's subjective.

>>9964017
So you hate him for being succesful while remaining authentic were you didn't dare to?

File: 1502955236605.jpg (31KB, 389x550px) Image search: [Google]

31KB, 389x550px

>>9960188

>>9966117
As is tradition for /lit/

>>9965206
This whole thread was golden. From the first time I became aware of Harris, back when he was debating Glenn Greenwald, it was obvious that the man is a charlatan. He messed up at every turn, showing that he either had no understanding of US foreign policy in the Middle East - in which case, his whole career based on clarifying the issue for laymen was based on a lie - or he had no understanding of the moral repercussions of his positions - in which case, all his work on morality is a lie. The man is fake, through and through, and how anyone could be seduces to take him seriously as an academic is beyond me.

2Scoops

>>9966117
>pseudo-intellectual posers
Just one, Sam Harris.

>>9966860
>tfw no kazakh volleyball muslim irl anime gf