/lit/ - Literature

>>11022297
I like that cover.

>>11022304
Why? It's not that clever.

>>11022297
Of course not you retard his book says 'free will' that means he's a free willist.

yes

>>11022369
How so

Sam Harris is simply pure reason.

>>11022381
he said so

>>11022387
cursed image

>>11022297
He's a sophist

Sam is so cringeworthy whenever he speaks on this or similar topics, especially when he's debated by actual people who academically study things like morality and free will. Why would someone choose to read this when there's literally centuries of works by greater minds considering the very topic?

>>11022397
But but but, this book doesnt argue that

>>11022427
probably because he writes clearly in modern vernacular

>>11022427
they don't have podcasts and youtube videos when they ebinly btfo le christfucks

>>11022387

free will is the mother lode of bad ideas

>Practice buddhism for years after college on your rich mommy money and become a master of mindfulness, passing past the zone where one comes to understand that the self is illusory
>Spend decades arguing rationality and emotionless discourse focusing only on the facts
>Pulled constantly into twitter shitflings at the first inkling of any provocation
>Has an autistic meltdown for a year because there was controversy after he had a guest on based entirely around the notion of controversy said guest elicits

???

>>11022479
charles murray did nothing wrong

Can anyone defend his TSA profiling stance to me? He seems to advocate for not wasting time screening those who are obviously not terrorists/jihadists (i.e. Japanese grandmothers) and that this would save time and money. But under this system wouldn't jihadists just have to recruit one Japanese grandmother, wittingly or unwittingly, to carry a bomb onto a plane to outsmart the system?

>>11022496
I don't really care about Murray. I just cannot imagine a universe in which he didn't think he'd get flak for this guest, and when one shitty online outrage factory writes a hit piece against him that basically no one reads he throws an autistic tantrum for over a year. This is especially confusing given his general practice of deep mindfulness, belief that the self is a lie, belief that there is no free will, and general position of rational discourse.

>>11022498
seems to be about probability. arab men are far more likely to be terrorists than asian women. a screening process should reflect that fact.

>>11022479
>become such a mindful Buddhist that you want to bomb the middle east

>>11022516
I understand that end of it, but it seems like a massive gap in the system if jihadists would only have to hyper-focus on recruiting in the profiling blind spot in order to have an EZ pass to the bombing. Especially since these events are so astronomically rare that even one failing would be a tremendous loss.

>>11022507
i dont use twitter or read shitty websites. though i agree you shouldnt feed the trolls and outrage addicts.

>>11022520
Stop misrepresenting him.

>>11022387
Truth, he would get BTFO if he ever bothered to pick up the first critique.

>>11022527
and in a random screening system they could simply play the odds game.

i think the example was more to highlight the fact that its overwhelmingly arab men that are the problem. and when it comes to things like immigration, we shouldnt pretend that muslim migrants are exactly the same as asian migrants.

>>11022520
Wirathu would be proud

>>11022507
Some people need an imagined enemy to feel important. Just like BLM imagines there's a white conspiracy against minorities, or feminists imagine there's a patriarchy out to get them. Sam Harris needs to believe the politically correct thought police are trying to destroy him.

He's not wrong though.

>>11022297
Ezra Klein surprisingly BTFO Sam in their "debate". Dude is actually smart.

>>11023940
it's like watching retards wrestle one another

>>11024033
They were just having different arguments. It was a waste of time, honestly a little bizarre.

Ezra was coming into it to convince Sam that it was irresponsible of him to:
>A. Not provide the proper context to his discussion regarding the history of discrimination in America and the role that 'scientific racism' played in it
>B. Not press Murray more on his questionable political stances and their relationship to race/IQ data
>C. Not have more POC of his podcast to discuss these issues and instead he stuck to mostly white guys
>D. Overly care about how he and Charles were harmed by the controversy over their resepective beliefs instead of how the opinions they hold have been used to harm others who are truly less fortunate

And then Ezra made some sub-points that Sam sticks to his own ideological tribe too often, as well, which is, in a sense, a form of identity politics.

Sam came into the room to argue that:
>A. Science and empirical data cannot be racist
>B. He and Charles have gotten an unfair and hyperbolic treatment from the left
>C. Vox defamed him and that their article was not acting in good faith
>D. Identity politics is a dead-end road and to engage in it is to further craft borders and boundaries between people

It was less of a debate and more of an episode where two people came into a room with a list of things they wanted to say to the audience so people knew where they stood. There was little serious engagement with each other's ideas and at the end I felt neither one gave ground or altered their standpoint. I generally find Sam's refusal to have people on his show under the excuse that to do so would be "boring" to be a lazy excuse but in this case I have to agree that it might have been better to leave it alone.

That being said I think Sam should have just never sperged out about the fucking Vox article in the first place. To insinuate that it defamed him and threatened his very livelihood is insane and paranoid. Anyone who read it already hates Sam; anyone who didn't read would never have known it existed if he didn't call it out.

>>11022297
Yes, Dennet is more a fan of mixing determinism and free will but the other three were determinists

>>11022479
On the first point he became rich and famous

>>11022297
I've enjoyed listening to Dennett and the Very Bad Wizards regarding this topic and getting his buddhism and meme neuroscience blown the fuck out every time.

I've enjoyed listening to Sam debate Dennett and the Very Bad Wizards regarding this topic and getting his buddhism and meme neuroscience blown the fuck out every time.

>>11024065
>it's like watching retards wrestle one another

Why does determinism / free will matter at all if time is linear (or at least experienced linearly)?

>>11022498
I think he's just saying we should be more realistic about who we're targeting and start a discussion on that.
There was an interview with this drug smuggler who handed them off to an old Asian couple in an RV who traveled between Canada and America.

Whatever the discussion is, our security is better than Turkey's. The only thing they do better is not tell anyone their plane until an hour before the flight

>>11023940
I don't get it.

>>11023264
But they are and do. Charles Murray was attacked leaving a speech and ppl in Britain, and Canada to a smaller degree, get thrown in prison for bringing this stuff up. I imagine in Germany too but I don't speak German so no examples

>>11024102
Exactly, Sam had him on two issues and let them slide.
Ezra brought up the white crowd, white guest thing and Sam brought up Ayann Hirsi Ali and Ezra stopped bringing that up but it went by so quick nobody caught it or Ezra wasn't made to have his head shoved in it because he still acted uppity. He was wrong and he had to admit that. If he did, the whole basis of Sam's points is vindicated. After that he could've delved into the facts of scientific racism but there was a hierarchy of issues and, in order to have a fair discussion, Sam should have went through them in steps.

>>11022429
Yes it does, read the book

>>11024130
I think you're saying why does the conversation matter if time proves determinism anyways. I think there might be bubbles where time is not just relative but some different "universe" altogether and separated from ours. For example black holes. I'd imagine that means something for consciousness maybe proving we have our own set of time which is determined by the time of some larger mass (maybe the black hole at the center of our universe)

>>11024143
It's Heidegger, it might be a fake quote. Heidegger was a nazi

>American college student takes drugs and then spends daddy's money to travel Asia in search of "wisdom"

So this is the power of American philosophy?

>>11024202
Excuse me, it was mommy's money. Don't forget he also used mommy's connections to publish a book, launch his career, and "earn" a neuroscience PhD.

Does anyone actually like Sam Harris?

He's probably the worst of the podcast philosophers

>>11022447
Why is free will seen as something exclusively Christian? Aristotle, Plato and classical philosophers in general believed in it.

>>11024267
Its not free will being Christian, it's Sam Harris being a nu-atheist

>>11022323
Not everything needs to be clever. It looks great.

>>11024249
He's a bit of a dummy, but I got to love him for permanently triggering reddit.
It's been a year since the race/IQ podcast and they still haven't recovered.

I don't understand why anyone aside from academic philosophers gives a shit about the free will question. It impacts literally nothing. Even if everything is determined by your environment, you still need to act as if you have free will, and if you tell people to take personal responsibility because they have free will, then that will impact them to choose more responsible actions... so even in a deterministic world, it's advantageous for them to believe they do have free will.

And they do have free will in any meaningful sense. The academic/philosophical level on which they don't is just nonsensical mental masturbation.

I had a Sam Harris phase. He has some interesting ideas, particularly on spirituality. But he never goes very deep. I can say the exact same thing about Jordan Peterson. I probably spent about 2 months being really into each of them, then got over it and realized they have very little to offer.

>>11026013
>I don't understand why anyone aside from academic philosophers gives a shit about the free will question
If there is no free will, there is no responsibility for actions.

>>11026052
I acknowledge that in the very post you're quoting. Work on reading comprehension.

>>11024267
Implying Plato and Aristotle are not the roots of Christianity

JOE ROGAN agrees with SAM HARRIS on RACE and IQ!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5r_E0bXF54U&feature=youtu.be

>>11024267
because people are uneducated

>>11026052
wrong

>>11026013
>And they do have free will in any meaningful sense. The academic/philosophical level on which they don't is just nonsensical mental masturbation.
these are not separate "levels". most academic philosophers agree that we "do have free will in any meaningful sense"

>>11026013
I like what Nietzsche thought about free will: that those who believe in it do it because they want other people to feel guilty and those who don't believe want to be excused for everything.
Thing is, not believing that you can affect your own live leads to pathetic outcomes and denies all experience. At the same time, the concept of causa sui, something creating itself out of nothing, is absurd.
The opinion I have arrived at is that free will and conscience is where we have to stop with our inquiries because there is no way to look at our humanity while still being human. We just have to take it as it is.

>>11022297
yes.

>>11026118
>implying they aren't
cuck

>>11028036
that's what he said

>>11028014
>the concept of causa sui, something creating itself out of nothing, is absurd.
i like how this isnt considered mental gymnastics when considering the moral laws of the universe

>>11024128

>>11024033
>>11024102

>Dude is actually really smart

Klein and Harris are merely two liberal narcissist morons of a slightly different sort. Debate is impossible because they don't really disagree on anything of significance so all they have left is empty moral grandstanding. Sam Harris' shtick amounts to reminding people over and over of how 'rational' and 'objective' he is, and how his secularized neocon morality is indiscutible truth and anyone who disagrees is an objectively bad person( see: https://samharris.org/the-limits-of-discourse/ for a particularly autistic example). While Ezra and the rest of the Vox crowd always sound like they are about to break down weeping, they might be managerial neoliberal wonks but they CARE DEEPLY about 'diversity' and the suffering of marginalized PoCs. 'Anti PC' sentiment is in great part a product of an atomized society dominated by mass media and corporations where the individual that forms the basis of liberalism finds itself reduced to insignificance, nothing but a set of prefabricated labels and affects assigned by a faceless HR/Marketing apparatus. According to Vox, all it takes is voting for the democrats and consuming the latest 'inclusive' commodities so magnanimously produced for the benefit of our guilt ridden and/or 'marginalized' selves by the culture industry. The campus anti PC shock jocks respond to contradictions within neoliberal therapeuthic capitalism, the customer is always right approach of colleges and management is becoming incompatible with the system's war making function and undermining the idea of the self reliant individual.