#144 Conquering Hate, with Deeyah Khan

This is precisely the kind of conversation that I admire Sam Harris most for undertaking. Not because he's so clever and so right. Actually the opposite. As with podcast #123, with Ezra Klein, Sam is confronted in this podcast with a person eloquently pointing out a shortcoming in his thinking. Unfortunately, as with the Ezra Klein podcast, Sam's blind spot stands out rather obviously, and he seems to be unable to get what she's saying, which I think is this: It's unfortunate that Sam spends so much of his time tearing down the "bad ideas" of Islam that lead to jihadism and being so obstinately and completely in denial that there were any geopolitical motives in someone like Bin Laden or any other privileged Islamist. She urges him not to flatten the narrative down to "Islam bad, secularism good" when she has found from personal meetings with these people that it's never that black and white, that it is always "all about complexity."

But this message can't go over so easily for a man who has made his name with books like "The End of Faith" or "Islam and the Future of Tolerance." Those books focused on the shortcomings of Islam. They not only ignore, but actually disparage, any arguments about Western imperialism. Khan is in square opposition to his simplistic view, but she can't seem to crack through Sam's multi-decades-long veneer of religious approbation.

Another fascinating idea that Khan brings up which Sam is lamentably unable to grok is her observation that these hate movements, be they Jihadist or White Supremist, seem to her to be carried out by foot soldiers culled from the ranks of the most vulnerable, the most impressionable, the most likely to fall under the sway of a charismatic leader willing to invest the time and effort into cultivating them. Showered with attention, magnified by the media and by their cause, these angry young men are brought from anonymity and inconsequentialism to notoriety and preeminence by their movement. Their leaders, their particular "Fight Club," may be motivated by a more pure idea of hatred or dogma, but these suicide bombers and KKK lackeys are lured into a movement on weaker pretexts, and Khan finds she is able to dismantle and penetrate them, not by correcting the false dogma, but by her own countering charisma. But Sam seems to only half-get this.

And frankly, Sam should take a more clear-headed view of his own stance here, as he clearly wants it both ways. He claims that it isn't fair to call him an "islamophobe" because of his Muslim friends, because by taking a stand against jihadists he is defending more vulnerable Muslims who are women, or gay, or even just more secular, than any leftist antifa warrior. And yet he is also on record as an avowed atheist who calls the Koran the worst book imaginable for getting the moral landscape wrong. Or consider this quote pulled off the web in less than thirty seconds by googling Sam Harris and Koran: "The position of the Muslim community in the face of all provocations seems to be: Islam is a religion of peace, and if you say that it isn’t, we will kill you." How can someone post that on his website, and then say he isn't an islamophobe!

In the interests of full disclosure, I would acknowledge that I am an islamophobe also. For that matter I'm a christiophobe and a hindophobe and any other brand of bigot you want to call me. Yes, even the word bigot I won't object to, in its original religious-only meaning (derived from the way the French mocked the imperiously pious British with their constant utterances of "by God").

Why admit this? Because I believe anyone--like Sam--who thinks that religions are delusional, misguided, and poisonously pedogogical vestiges of a less evolved mindset, ought to come clean and at least own his bigotry.

#141 Is #Metoo Going Too Far? (with Rebecca Traister)

Here are my takeaways on this interview with Rebecca Traister.

To start with, as a curmudgeonly middle-aged white male, I found the experience fascinating to listen to this extremely articulate woman explain so much that is outside of my experience male. 

Ok, here are the points she made that I found most noteworthy:

Bill Cosby might have been cut some slack in the early years of his accusations because he was known for defending the white status quo against black activists. 

That Bill Clinton was given a pass is seen as a mistake that feminists paid for later because it undermined their claims to being unaligned politically. 

Matt Damon was slapped down appropriately for mansplaining how to respond to sexual aggression. He didn’t lose his job, in fact he appeared shortly afterward to public acclaim, and so the punishment fit the crime.

Charlie Rose was fired appropriately. His life didn’t end, he wasnot sent to jail, also appropriately

The flattening and mindless approbation of the perpetrators of sexual abuse is happening, not by the accusers, but by the accused. 

Her point is not that power can’t harm and powerful people or doesn’t harm them, which is what the less awake people on Reddit seem to think, her point is instead that when disenfranchised people exert their influence or power, it is considered violence, but that when powerful people exert their influence and power, it doesn’t even register.

The thing I appreciate best about this is her point that powerful people on the left do in fact survive their excoriation by angry feminist when they strike the wrong note, and that Matt Damon warning of a flattened  response to sexual harassment to women resulted only in people being mean to him on Twitter. But then ironically this is flattened into the tale that he has been walked to the guillotine. 

To his last point that the excesses of the mob are driving doubters to trump, she points out that not all objections are punitive, many are correcting. And that going too gently is why the previous waves of feminism ultimately failed. And that this is a difficult conversation, that even she has trouble with it sometimes. 

Review of Waking Up #129: AN INSIDER'S VIEW OF MEDICINE

Program Notes: "In this episode of the Waking Up podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Dr. Nina Shapiro about the practice of medicine. They discuss the unique resiliency of children, the importance of second opinions, bad doctors, how medical training has changed in recent years, medical uncertainty, risk perception, vaccine safety, and other topics."

I don't actually find the first 2/3 of this podcast very informative. I'd pretty much sum it up by saying: you're not doing yourself any favors by trying to tell the hospital staff how to do their job or who to assign to your case.

The last third or so, where Dr. Shapiro addresses some myths and misconceptions, was a bit more interesting, and it would probably be a really good idea to buy her book, "Hype," where she tells the reader things like, gluten is a protein, not a carb, and not helpful to avoid, or the whole concept of "de-toxing" is nonsense, or anti-oxidants do not actually prevent most cancers, etc. 

(Regardless of her opinions about GMOs, I'd probably be inclined to cling to my unscientific prejudice against them, but that's more because I don't believe there's any unbiased scientists actually working on the question, than because I think science isn't capable of addressing the question.)

Review of Waking Up #126: IN DEFENSE OF HONOR

Official Notes: 

In this episode of the Waking Up podcast Sam Harris speaks with Tamler Sommers about cultures of honor. They discuss the difference between honor and dignity, “justice porn,” honor killings, honor and interpersonal violence, prison and gang culture, collective responsibility and collective punishment, retributive vs restorative justice, the ethics of forgiveness and redemption, #metoo, and other topics.

Not one the more interesting podcast episodes. In fact it boggles the mind that Sommers wanted to write a whole book about this; nobody likes to be lectured about honor or morality. And even less do I want to be asked to think about the history or sociology of it. It boggles the mind even further that he found a publisher, although maybe he's in with enough ethics professors around the country that he can guarantee a certain number of sales. 

It did make me want to look up “Justice Porn” on Reddit, though. Also, the idea of restorative justice is pretty cool and one can imagine many ways it would improve the country if it could start to be implemented more, for those specific crimes where it is appropriate.

Otherwise, not the best use of the listener's time. I recommend a "2X" setting for play speed. 

Review of Waking Up: #125. WHAT IS CHRISTIANITY

Official Notes: 

In this episode of the Waking Up podcast, Sam Harris speaks to Bart Ehrman about his experience of being a born-again Christian, his academic training in New Testament scholarship, his loss of faith, the most convincing argument in defense of Christianity, the status of miracles, the composition of the New Testament, the resurrection of Jesus, the nature of heaven and hell, the book of Revelation, the End Times, self-contradictions in the Bible, the concept of a messiah, whether Jesus actually existed, Christianity as a cult of human sacrifice, the conversion of Constantine, and other topics.

This is a deeper look into biblical scholarship of the 400 years AD. No hell; heaven is just Earth with “slightly tweaked “ laws of physics; the difference between early Christians and other Jews is that Jews didn’t believe that a messiah would be crucified.

It was fascinating to learn that that Ehrman lost his faith when, in bible college, he was told that contradictions between texts in the Bible might merely mean that one of the texts is wrong. Shouldn't have let the camel's nose in THAT tent!

Another fun fact is that early Christians and Jews believed in a multiplicity of gods, so Yahweh was just the number 1 god, not the only one.

Review of Waking Up #124: IN SEARCH OF REALITY

Official Notes:

In this episode of the Waking Up podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Sean Carroll about our understanding of reality. They discuss consciousness, the many worlds view of quantum mechanics, the arrow of time, free will, facts and values, and other topics.

Housekeeping:

“I had an argument for most of what I was saying, and Klein did not.“, Sam maintains his blind spot and does not understand that Klein’s central argument is that the data is too fuzzy and too charged to draw conclusions from.

Is versus Ought. Sam takes a line reminiscent of the Jordan Peterson position that what is true includes what ought to be true, specifically not maximizing suffering for all humans.

Free will: they reach an understanding that there are two levels you can look at human behavior on: the microscopic level, where there is no free will, and the macro level, where we believe that we have free will because nobody yet is capable of predicting our responses.

Carroll points out that in 500 years the big tragedy will be that nobody figured out what quantum mechanics means, although he is 100% convinced that quantum mechanics is right.

Also Carroll seems to think that an infinite number of infinities, the multi-universe theory, is less complicated then something like an extra, undetected, variable.

Review of Waking Up #120: WHAT IS AND WHAT MATTERS

Official Notes:

In this episode of the Waking Up podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Rebecca Goldstein and Max Tegmark about the foundations of human knowledge and morality.

Another one in front of a live audience. At the Q &A after someone even asked about the live audience thing and SH affirmed that it has the advantage of bringing an audience into the conversation. He also said it might be weird for podcast listeners since some laughs won’t seem justified. They don’t address my principal complaints that a live podcast tends to pander just a little more. But actually, the pandering was less of an issue in this one. This actually felt more like a genuine conversation and less like an attempt to squeeze in as many one-liners as possible.

The main focus was on how science can answer the question of what is matter but not the question of what matters. Topics covered: counterfactuals, modal realism (everything that can exist, does) multi universes. Refinement of free will explanation by Sam.

Science= what is

Philosophy =what matters.

Sam claims that even if you think you don’t care about philosophy, only science, you still have to decide what science you like and that means some elements of philosophy gets involved. Not sure I buy this.

I also dispute their agreement that that that human brain cognitively developed to be able to understand parabolic arcs, but not quantum mechanics. 

Having studied quantum mechanics, I think the human brain is more of a blank slate than that. It may be true that we understand parabolic arcs better than a lot of other mathematical forms because of our brain structure, but I think that's something that develops as we mature through childhood.

It’s maybe also true that quantum mechanics doesn’t make sense to the human brain because it's a nonsensical theory.

Review of Waking Up #119. HIDDEN MOTIVES

Official Notes:

In this episode of the Waking Up podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Robin Hanson about our hidden motives in everyday life. They discuss selfishness, hypocrisy, norms and meta-norms, cheating, deception, self-deception, education, the evolutionary logic of conversation, social status, signaling and counter-signaling, common knowledge, AI, and many other topics.

Robin has a pretty cynical view of people and tries to cover the appalling things he says with a deprecating chuckle every time he talks. By the end of the hour that gets old. 

Also, this has the disadvantage of being before a live audience, with all the irritating features that come with this forum.

As for the actual content of the podcast, I'm not sure there's much in here that's very deep. If I were Sam and not afraid of offending the guest, I'd label the episode "Extreme Cynicism." Because that seems to be all there is here.

Review of Waking Up #117: NETWORKS POWER AND CHAOS

Official Notes:

In this episode of the Waking Up podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Niell Ferguson about his new book "The Square and the Tower." They discuss his career as a writer, networks and hierarchies, how history gets written, the similarity between the 16th century and the 21st, the role of social media in the 2016 Presidential election, the influence of advertising on the public sphere, Trump, the Russian investigation, Islamic extremism, counterfactuals, what would have happened if Clinton had won the presidency, immigration in Europe, conspiracy theories, capitalism, globalization, communism, wealth inequality, universal basic income, Henry Kissinger, the prospect of a US war with China, cyberwar, and other topics.

Here's a crazy idea: the counterfactuals if Clinton were elected may be even grimmer than our Trump factuals.

I'm not sure I believe that, but it intrigued me enough to check Fergeson's book out of the library. And I'm glad I did--he's a wonderful writer and historian. Plus he didn't drink the Obama Koolaid, so you can actually read an intellectual and a scholar who doesn't gush mindlessly over the Obama years.

The episode was stimulating, I suppose, but nothing in it leapt out at me. But read the book. Or at least a few chapters of it.

Review of Waking Up #116: AI RACING TOWARD THE BRINK

Official Notes:

In this episode of the Waking Up podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Eliezer Yudkowsky about the nature of intelligence, different types of AI, the “alignment problem," IS vs OUGHT, the possibility that future AI might deceive us, the AI arms race, conscious AI, coordination problems, and other topics.

The one thing I got out of this is that there’s an unknown number of brilliant solutions to problems that afflict millions of people but if there’s no exploitable market for it then no one has published their solutions such as using 100 lightbulbs to alleviate Seasonal Affective Disorder.

I have little interest in the idea that AI will run out of control soon. Why? Because it's inevitable. Like the next idiotic thing Trump will do.

Review of #115: SAM HARRIS, LAWRENCE KRAUSS, AND MATT DILLAHUNTY

Official notes:

In this episode of the Waking Up podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Lawrence Krauss and Matt Dillahunty about the threat of nuclear war, Christian support for Trump, science and a universal conception of morality, the role of intuition in science, the primacy of consciousness, the nature of time, free will, the self, meditation, and other topics.

I’m beginning to think that I do not like his podcasts involving a live audience. it seems like a lot of what is said ends up being for comic effect and earnestness goes by the wayside.

Review of Waking Up #114: POLITICS AND SANITY

Official podcast notes: 

In this episode of the Waking Up podcast, Sam Harris speaks with David Frum and Andrew Sullivan about the Trump presidency, hyper-partisanship, how democracies fail, immigration, the lowering life expectancy in the U.S., racism, social media, the opioid crisis, marijuana legalization, religion, what a healthy politics might look like, and other topics.

Here’s another podcast that is not terribly interesting, if you’ve already listened to the earlier ones. In a nutshell: Trump bad, cell phone addiction bad, facism bad, no consensus on free will. 

Review of Waking Up #113: CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE SELF

Official podcast notes: 
In this episode of the Waking Up podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Anil Seth about the scientific study of consciousness, where consciousness emerges in nature, levels of consciousness, perception as a “controlled hallucination,” emotion, the experience of “pure consciousness,” consciousness as “integrated information,” measures of “brain complexity,” psychedelics, different aspects of the “self,” conscious AI, and many other topics.

I have to admit that this episode was not terribly appealing to me. I don’t buy Sam’s theory of the lack of free will.  And the “controlled hallucination” idea is trivially true and uninteresting. 

So I don’t recommend this podcast to any except the truest fan. 

Review of Waking Up #124: IN SEARCH OF REALITY

Official podcast notes: 

In this episode of the Waking Up podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Sean Carroll about our understanding of reality. They discuss consciousness, the many worlds view of quantum mechanics, the arrow of time, free will, facts and values, and other topics.

Housekeeping:

"I had an argument for most of what I was saying, and Klein did not." Sam maintains his blind spot and does not understand that Klein’s central argument is that the data is too fuzzy and too charged to draw conclusions from. 

Is versus Ought: Sam takes a line reminiscent of the Jordan Peterson position that what is true includes what ought to be true, specifically not maximizing suffering for all humans.

Free will: they reach an understanding that there are two levels from which you can look at human behavior: the microscopic level, where there is no free will, and the macro level, where we believe that we have free will because nobody yet is capable of predicting our responses.

Carroll points out that in 500 years the big tragedy will be that nobody figured out what quantum mechanics means, although he is 100% convinced that quantum mechanics is right. 

Also Carroll seems to think that an infinite number of infinities, the multi-universe theory, is less complicated then something like an extra, undetected, variable. 

Review of Waking Up #123: IDENTITY AND HONESTY

Official Notes:

"In this episode of the Waking Up podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Ezra Klein, Editor-at-Large for Vox Media, about racism, identity politics, intellectual honesty, and the controversy over his podcast with Charles Murray (Waking Up #73).

Ezra Klein is the editor-at-large and founder of Vox. Before that, he was columnist and editor at the Washington Post, a policy analyst at MSNBC, and a contributor to Bloomberg."

As of this writing (4/20/2018), the podcast may be found here:

This conversation between Sam Harris and Ezra Klein stems from Sam's episode number 73, the controversial interview with Charles Murray (reviewed previously). I found this conversation intriguing for several reasons:

1) There are some highly-charged issues discussed here by two men of no small, uh... shall we say, self esteem. Both are quite accomplished at keeping ego to a minimum and eloquently defending their points of view. They manage to get through the entire episode without losing their cool, quite a feat given the stakes: essentially, is one of them a racist or is the other one a simpleton? Would that I were as accomplished in such prickly (or even equanimous!) conversations. It demonstrates one of the reasons why I think Sam is as close to a divinity as we will find on this earth.

2) The episode does a stellar job of highlighting Sam's blind spots, which are few, but which really do seem to be persistent and beyond even his ability to recognize. One such intellectual Achilles heel is that Murray is not merely some objective man of science, committed to the most rigorous possible interpretation of the data, as Sam paints him to be. Murray's background in social policy and his publication record do indicate a certain bias. (I don't mean to say Murray's a racist. He certainly didn't come off as such in the interview. But it does mean he may not be a completely neutral instrument of observation.) This should be a huge red flag for Sam, but he is so caught up in his own guilt about participating in the "moral panic" against Murray that he doesn't seem to care. And so he digs in his heels to defend data that, for all he knows, Klein is correctly calling dubious. 

3) Another of the blind spots which I have noticed in Sam's podcasts is a certain hypocrisy about "mind-reading." Sam often bemoans the fact that his detractors claim to know what he really means to say, when really they should accept on face value what he says. You might think that if this is such a big issue with him, he would be extra careful not to do the same and ascribe motivations to his opponents. Especially if they aren't broadcasting said motivations, and therefore these must be guessed through some magical mind-reading ability on Sam's part. And for the most part Sam doesn't do this. But in this particular conversation, Sam concludes that Klein et al. are out to get him in statements like: "What has been accomplished in Murray’s case, and is being attempted in mine (italics mine), is nothing less than the total destruction of a person’s reputation."

Such a claim demonstrates not only a certain hypocrisy, but also a tinge of paranoia that is probably only making Sam's blind spot worse. Sam, buddy--word of advice: purge yourself of the bad-faith interpretation about what Klein is doing and you might be more open to actually hearing him.


4) Another valuable datum gleaned from this conversation is the fact that Murray is not a scientist but a policy analyst, and not only that, but he comes into this issue with an ax to grind. It was almost comical to hear someone as scientifically illiterate as Klein try to make this point, and unfortunately given Klein's lack of creds in this area I think Sam doesn't pay enough attention to him here (another blind spot?) but essentially the jury is still out on how well linked any of Murray's data is to genetic origins within populations. It is therefore highly unwise to use the data as a basis to draw any conclusions. Though Murray, apparently oblivious to this problem, does draw conclusions and even recommends policy.
The dangers of drawing a conclusions from fuzzy data when you have an ax to grind are spectacularly well known. Even in my narrow little domain of physics, we have seen ludicrous results from this sort of thing, such as the infamous Milliken Oil Drop fiasco.

Review of Waking Up #116.5: THE RUSSELL BRAND INTERVIEW

Program notes:

“This episode of the Waking Up podcast features an interview that Sam did with Russell Brand on the Under the Skin podcast. They speak about religion, terrorism, politics, meditation, psychedelics, and other topics.”

This conversation exhibits an interesting collision between Sam Harris and several typical liberal positions. Interesting, but hardly definitive, because though Russell Brand is eloquent, he is easily diverted. 

If you come at WUWSH as I do, from a liberal place, you may recognize many of Brand's objections to Harris' pronouncements and even some of his thought experiments. But Brand is incapable of digging in deep and really opposing Sam's positions. He’s more interested in a quick, entertaining response, which is often a non sequitor--whence Brand's brilliantly coined “giddy blur” which so dismays poor Sam.

Sam sidesteps Brand's questions of power and oppression with his thin argument that since Palestinian Christians don’t suicide-bomb, the problem is all about Islam. In my mind, this is as specious as saying, for example, that the racist underpinnings of the American ghetto are not the reason a higher incidence of black men in America are convicted felons, because, well, just look at all the black women who aren't felons.

Sam is too quick to disregard Brand's objections because he won't stick to them for long. I suspect that since this is Brand's show, the problem is exacerbated by a desire to keep things light and amusing. But I wish he'd been able to drive home better his key points, such as how the entire Muslim world feels under attack by an exploitative Western military-industrial complex, or that state run violence is morally just a scaled-up version of jihadism. But Brand never stays on point long enough to really land a punch. And that leaves Sam free to wallow in his monomaniacal narrative that Islam=bad. 

You can see the shadows behind Sam's veil here: to say that one religion is the "epicenter of bad ideas" makes you tautologically a bigot. Which then begs the question of whether being a bigot is really a bad thing. I'm not sure it is. Certainly a religion like the Aztec's, which required human sacrifice, would be pretty hard for even the Southern Poverty Law Center to get behind. And agreeing on that point makes us all, by definition, bigots.  So I leave you with this question : is it necessarily bad to be a bigot?

Review of Waking Up #73: FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE

Official podcast notes :
"In this episode of the Waking Up podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Charles Murray about the controversy over his book The Bell Curve, the validity and significance of IQ as a measure of intelligence, the problem of social stratification, the rise of Trump, universal basic income, and other topics."

As of this writing (4/16/2018), the podcast may be found here:

I'm starting with episode number 73 because it is probably Sam Harris' most controversial one to date.

His guest, Charles Murray, a fellow at the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute, favors the dismantling of affirmative action-type programs. He is most famous, however, for having co-authored a book some decades ago called The Bell Curve, in which he argues that intelligence tests are valid and measure a real thing, general intelligence. GI has been proven to have at least some genetic basis, and that different populations (i.e. "races") have different average scores.

This leads to all sorts of ad hominem attacks on him, most famously in March 2017 at Middlebury College, a tiny private university where Murray was invited to speak, until something Sam calls "moral panic" kicked in and the students rioted.

Sam, no stranger to moral panic himself, steers the conversation to the verifiable scientific data that is presented in The Bell Curve. He wants to ignore Murray's political motivations, or even willfully disregard them, in order to prove his commitment to The Truth. (He'll pay a price for this down the road.) But in this episode there are important ideas discussed, some of which flew in the face of my admittedly uninformed beliefs.

It's guaranteed to stimulate, whether or not you find yourself persuaded by the ideas they discuss.

Who am I and what makes me think anyone will want to read this?

This blog is about Sam Harris, not me. Though I recognize that the reader may want some background on me as the blog author. So here's a brief bio.

I'm a straight white male who has worked in various technical fields since getting a PhD in theoretical physics nearly 30 years ago. I also write poetry and fiction--mostly near-term futurist stuff.

I first discovered Sam Harris about three months ago, listening to a TED Radio Hour broadcast which included Sam discussing his concerns about AI in the near future. His eloquent thoughtfulness captivated me, as it has for millions of other people around the country. Intrigued, I Googled him and made my way to his Waking Up podcast.

For the past months, I've blissfully listened to many really wonderful conversations on Sam's podcast. Some of them have been very eye-opening. Some have been mostly good, though perhaps downplaying some point I perceived to be critical. Others didn't really shake me up much one way or the other. And a few have strayed so far from the norms of good conversation to be hilarious in their incoherence. But, even in those last few, Sam's graciousness and steadfast desire to really try reach an understanding is inspirational. He makes me wish I could even be half as rational and considerate when I talk to people that obstreperous.

Indeed, if you have the time and inclination, I urge you to skip this blog and go play all 120+ podcasts (preferably in chronological order!) and I wish upon you the same bliss of intellectual stimulation that I've felt.

But if you prefer to start by merely dipping a toe in this water to see how it suits you, then please have a look at my subsequent blog entries for the episodes (to date) that I recommend the most highly--and the ones I don't.

And let me know what you think!