Peterson, Harris, etc....

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It’s barely been two days since a lunatic shot up a mosque and people out here bending over backwards to defend an islamaphobe like Harris. FFS.
Surely it’s obvious why? This seems to be a recurring theme on here lately.

*Someone says something dangerously false about someone*
“Oh actually, btw that isn’t true”
“OMG why are you defending him?”
 

Brwned

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Think the idea Sam Harris is a ‘lefty’ is pretty nonsensical. He’s not a far right nutcase either but I’d put him in the centre right category.

My main issue with him is he’s no where as smart as he thinks he is. Silver spoon kid to boot.
He has said multiple times he is a "lefty". Thinking you know better than him about his political ideology suggests your main issue with him might contain a hint of projection in there.

Yeah I'm not going to listen to two hours of Charles Murray, sorry. :rolleyes:


Yeah we get Andrei it's a train journey now get a move on.
The point is that if you only read a 5 minute summary of a 2 1/2 hour discussion then inevitably you lose the nuance of the discussion. In controversial topics the nuance is important. If you choose to read a bastardised version of that discussion from an author you feel comfortably aligned with then you are not in any way informing yourself about that subject, but reinforcing your assumptions. If you do that on a repeated basis on the same subject then your perception of reality becomes distorted without you even realising. It feels gratifying but it isn't achieving what you claim its intended to. They remain assumptions but somehow they feel grounded in evidence.

That's all fine, if you accept the psychological dangers inherent in that, but then you're not a particularly useful commentator on that subject. Your view on Sam Harris is in fact your view on the caricature of Sam Harris. Telling other people that this is what Sam Harris is like without acknowledging that you are informing them of what his caricature is like is intellectually dishonest and not helpful to the person asking the original question.
 

Organic Potatoes

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It’s barely been two days since a lunatic shot up a mosque and people out here bending over backwards to defend an islamaphobe like Harris. FFS.
It’s a relevant time to have the discussion, particularly in regards to Harris.

Though I’m growing weary of that term being thrown around so loosely, as he dishes it out to Christians just the same in his defense of atheism.
 

altodevil

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Someone shouldn't be pinned as an islamaphobe if they are negative towards all religions. Also, why should anyone have to defend not liking Islam? It's a perfectly valid viewpoint.
 

Fridge chutney

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Harris always struck me the most politically centrist and sensible of the IDW folks. He's certainly a lot more grounded and reasonable than Ben Shapiro, although that shouldn't be the bar.
 

Sweet Square

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Hunter Maats is notorious for pretty much making up shit that Harris has never said or meant.
@Sweet Square Not only does that article completely misrepresent how the conversation went, and in particular which parts of Murray's claims Harris agreed to, but it's by Vox, who pretty much mounted an entire smear campaign on Harris after the podcast.
Vox fake news ?

This is just pointless now because well I'm not going to listen to a couple of hours of Charles Murray(A man who literally burnt a cross on his front lawn in his younger days)and you will just say a criticism of Harris is some bizarre smear campaign that always misrepresent his views(Basically the standard push back Harris gives to any criticism of him)

podcast does not make him racist and right wing.
I've said already in my other post the podcast isn't the only reason. What in your mind makes Harris left wing ? Is he for universal healthcare ? Is he for stronger workers rights ? Higher Taxes on the wealthy ? Ending private prisons ? etc Answers in non 2 hours + podcast format please .

that wasn't really the purpose of the whole conversation.
Then you don't know the history of how people like Murray operate and are just being played along.
 
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Vox fake news ?

This is just pointless now because well I'm not going to listen to a couple of hours of Charles Murray(A man who literally burnt a cross on his front lawn in his younger days)and you will just say a criticism of Harris is some bizarre smear campaign that always misrepresent his views(Basically the standard push back Harris gives to any criticism of him)
It's not necessarily fake news. I don't see Vox as a bad faith actor in general, but as @Brwned said, in this instance the representation of Sam Harris and the conversation was a caricature. And yeah, Harris can overdo the "I'm misrepresented" thing, but in this instance he is right.


I've said already in my other post the podcast isn't the only reason. What in your mind makes Harris left wing ? Is he for universal healthcare ? Is he for stronger workers rights ? Higher Taxes on the wealthy ? Ending private prisons ? etc Answers in non 2 hours + podcast format please .
He is indeed in favour of all the bolded parts. I can't say about private prisons because I don't remember, but I'd bet his views on it would align with most people on the left. I'm not sure why you're so obsessed with branding him as a right winger when he's a self proclaimed center-leftist whose political views are far more on the left than any Democratic candidate the last decades.


Then you don't know the history of how people like Murray operate and are just being played along
What? As I've already said, Murray's conclusions on policy are absolutely terrible, and if that was topic of the conversation then I'm sure it would have met way more pushback since they have pretty much opposite views on things like the social safety net. But again, that's not how it went. The only thing they agree on is that intellience is an increasingly important factor in quality of life, but while Murray ridiculously claims that a laissez-faire approach is the solution, Harris thinks a redistribution to benefit the once left out of an increasingly wealthy society is the way to go. Very right wing, right?
 
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Charlie Foley

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I’m pretty sure I once saw Harris arguing in favour of UBI. I’ll try to find the clip after work
 

Sweet Square

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He is indeed in favour of all the bolded parts. I can't say about private prisons because I don't remember, but I'd bet his views on it would align with most people on the left.
Links ? I've tried to find him supporting universal healthcare and have found nothing and the same can be said of the other topics I've mentioned. I mean Harris couldn't support the most basic centre left reforms Bernie put forward in 2016.

Now I get that American politics is so far to the right that anyone who isn't a actual Nazi seems on the left but simply guessing Harris fails somewhere on the left is kinda of useless.

I'm not sure why you're so obsessed with branding him as a right winger when he's a self proclaimed center-leftist whose political views are far more on the left than any Democratic candidate the last decades.
I'm not obsessed with branding him anything. I've looked at his views on the topics I mentioned and came to the conclusion he's on the political right. And some people on here really struggled with that, so thats why we are talking about it now.


I’m pretty sure I once saw Harris arguing in favour of UBI. I’ll try to find the clip after work
UBI can also be a right wing idea. Milton Friedman loved the idea.
 

Brwned

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It's not a guess, he has self identified as a liberal repeatedly. The only reason not to believe him would be if you think there's some benefit to claiming he's a liberal, which makes no sense if you consider who the majority of his audience is.
 

Brwned

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no one doubts he's a liberal, the doubt is whether he's left wing which is different despite some overlap
The overlap is pretty significant, especially if you subscribe to the view that political views should be contextualised in their time rather than viewed in the abstract, and I don't think it's useful to speak for everyone. Your view on this subject is much more nuanced than SS'.
 
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Brwned

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this is a good case in point, his bizarre email conversation with noam chomsky https://samharris.org/the-limits-of-discourse/
Yes I found it particularly bizarre too. I don't think it demonstrates your point at all though. It's one of the many examples of him preaching about tolerance while being wholeheartedly incapable of it. I don't think either of them did their views much justice in that exchange. You don't have to be on the same side as Chomsky to be on the left. Regardless of how much SS would wish it so.
 

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I, perhaps mistakenly, pegged him as clearly right wing years ago after all the Islam stuff he came out with. He seems fairly left wing on social issues these days, and fairly right wing on certain political issues, to me at least. But I don't think he has a definitive bias either way.

It's a strange discussion to have though, isn't it? We seem to be of the general consensus these days that it's a bad thing that society is so polarised and divided on everything.
Yet when someone like Harris comes along who seems kinda balanced and open-minded, or at worst is only slightly biased in one direction, we still endeavour to put him in the clearly labelled left or right box.
 

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Political designations become meaningless if the overlap means x and y are the same, in this case liberalism and leftism which have very different intellectual and public histories. Yes, the overlap is there and it's important to recognise it and to engage it and sometimes ally against further forces but they're not the same. Leftism is a specific designation for redistributive economic policies, you can be a conservative leftist and many have been, it just happens that in the west liberal leftism is more common. You don't have to be a randian lunatic to not be left wing, you just have to be against leftist economics, namely against socialism. Harris is broadly an interventionist capitalist, i.e a liberal. There's MPs in the British conservative party who would vote against moving away from free at the point of service healthcare or who voted to legalize gay marriage etc. But it would be silly to call them leftists.
 

Organic Potatoes

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Political designations become meaningless if the overlap means x and y are the same, in this case liberalism and leftism which have very different intellectual and public histories. Yes, the overlap is there and it's important to recognise it and to engage it and sometimes ally against further forces but they're not the same. Leftism is a specific designation for redistributive economic policies, you can be a conservative leftist and many have been, it just happens that in the west liberal leftism is more common. You don't have to be a randian lunatic to not be left wing, you just have to be against leftist economics, namely against socialism. Harris is broadly an interventionist capitalist, i.e a liberal. There's MPs in the British conservative party who would vote against moving away from free at the point of service healthcare or who voted to legalize gay marriage etc. But it would be silly to call them leftists.
Since we’re on the topic of podcasters, Dan Carlin recently did one that delved into this topic of ‘left v. right’ that I enjoyed. Not on his usual channel, but the Addendum one as well as on the History on Fire podcast with the Italian guy.
 

Charlie Foley

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Links ? I've tried to find him supporting universal healthcare and have found nothing and the same can be said of the other topics I've mentioned. I mean Harris couldn't support the most basic centre left reforms Bernie put forward in 2016.

Now I get that American politics is so far to the right that anyone who isn't a actual Nazi seems on the left but simply guessing Harris fails somewhere on the left is kinda of useless.



I'm not obsessed with branding him anything. I've looked at his views on the topics I mentioned and came to the conclusion he's on the political right. And some people on here really struggled with that, so thats why we are talking about it now.



UBI can also be a right wing idea. Milton Friedman loved the idea.
I did not mean it as a "is he right or left," more just adding a policy belief I think he has. I should have phrased that better, sorry.
 

Charlie Foley

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this is a good case in point, his bizarre email conversation with noam chomsky https://samharris.org/the-limits-of-discourse/
I “may have been talking about both Christopher Hitchens and [you], given the way the question was posed,” or maybe about Hitchens, whose views I know about, whereas in your case I only know about your published falsifications of my views, which readers of yours have sent to me, and which I didn’t bother to respond to.
The idea of publishing personal correspondence is pretty weird, a strange form of exhibitionism – whatever the content. Personally, I can’t imagine doing it. However, if you want to do it, I won’t object.
:lol::lol::lol: Old man is ruthless :lol::lol:
 

Ether

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I've not read or listened to Sam Harris since around Hitchens passing. Is he considered alt-right now? He's always been critical of religion, but until recently that's not been considered a right-wing viewpoint.
definitely not racist :wenger:
 

InfiniteBoredom

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I haven’t listened to them, so I won’t comment on that. But going from ‘Islam is bad’ (which is true, all religions sucks shit) to ‘airport profiling and pre-emptive tactical nuclear strikes are justified’ does suggest a certain frame of mind, or implicit bias towards the group of people in question.
 

Brwned

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definitely not racist :wenger:
It's a very weird point but that tends to be the case when you take anyone's point out of context. Of course, even within that clip there's a pretty essential phrase missing from that wonderful Twitter feed. Clearly what he said and what he was summarised as saying are two completely different things. Which is how caricatures are built up.
 

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definitely not racist :wenger:
Why do people quote rando Twitter users who deliberately manipulate the information to score points?

It's an annoying trend at the moment.

Tweet 1 is talking about alt right, not right wing.

Tweet 2 is about the warping effect of trying not to appear racist, if that makes sense. In the example, he thinks that if the man on the lift is white she may wait for the next one because her instict is to avoid the lift (schrodinger's rapist concept), however her instict may be overidden by not wanting to appear racist if the man was black.

The point being that the man's race shouldn't play a role in whether she gets on the lift and safety should be the priority. I'm not sure I agree with his example on a factual level but on its face he's making a wider point that is pretty much the opposite of racist.
 
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@Sweet Square Sorry for the delay. Here is a piece which sums up his views on wealth inequality, if you're interested:
https://samharris.org/how-rich-is-too-rich/

I'm not sure if I made myself completely clear though, he is on the left but he is by no means a raging leftie. His views on identity culture and islam are obviously not that of a leftie. So call it left or centre left or something like that, as you say those terms don't make much sense with the skewering of the spectrum, but right wing is not a correct label.
 

Sweet Square

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@Sweet Square Sorry for the delay. Here is a piece which sums up his views on wealth inequality, if you're interested:
https://samharris.org/how-rich-is-too-rich/

I'm not sure if I made myself completely clear though, he is on the left but he is by no means a raging leftie. His views on identity culture and islam are obviously not that of a leftie. So call it left or centre left or something like that, as you say those terms don't make much sense with the skewering of the spectrum, but right wing is not a correct label.
No worries. Thanks for the link

I'm now more confused than before. There's is no mention of universal healthcare, workers rights, higher wages in there(All this isn't raging lefty talk but basic social democracy). Harris also talks about cutting government spending(Although later on says the US government should spend trillions of dollars) and the one ''redistributive policy'' is a one time tax that rich people would voluntarily pay.

Its a completely mess.


I'm not saying Harris is Ted Cruz but the only reason he is considered on the left by some is down to just far right and screwed the american political system is. Anyway where else Harris would be considered at best a conservative liberal e.g. David Cameron.

Also this bit made me laugh. Harris fans - Tax = Communism.
Contrary to many readers’ assumptions, I am not recommending that the federal government confiscate productive capital from the rich to subsidize the shiftlessness of people who do not want to work
 
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I went to see JBP a few months ago. Had a VIP ticket, front row. The venue was packed. He walked in very slowly. Like an old prophet. Looked around and started talking. Afterwards there were about 100 people with VIP tickets and JBP stayed another hour for Q&A. Then in the end the obligatory handshake and a photo with the man. Was a fun experience.

The weirdest part was whilst people were waiting in line to have a quick chat and a photo with Peterson, an offer was made to kill some time and meet Dave Rubin backstage, for a private chat. They asked £50 for it. I think only one or two people did it. Came back after ten minutes or so. Seemed like a complete waste of money at that point.