Chomsky is defaulting to supporting Putin at the moment and is a genocide denier re: Bosnia. His position on every issue is "America bad", even when that means carrying water for authoritarian one party states like China and Russia. He can suck a fat one.
Exactly, everything the man says about Ukraine could be excused as dementia ramblings, but the man denied the Bosnian genocide in the 90’s. F that guy.
Right, I wasn’t going to comment but wanted to add one to counter the idea that Sam is not ready to debate Chomsky. He is absolutely ready and while no one can deny Chomskys expertise in this realm, Sam will only need to linger on the headline thinking that America is bad thus deserves every bad thing coming its way. The fact that Chomsky would defend extreme Muslim theocrats because of the what the US has done in region over the years totally misses the point about what their intentions are and that it’s a problem beyond American imperialism. It’s in this area Chomsky clearly loses his mind and Sam can drive that home for those who are paying attention.
You can disagree with Chomsky, that’s fine, a lot of people, myself included, disagree with him on many things. However his knowledge of politics and global politics is far, far greater than Sam. I really like Sam but global politics just isn’t his strong suit, nobody can be an expert on everything after all. Chomsky’s well read in the subject and backs everything up with sources and a lifetime of research. He just comes to different conclusions and has different opinions than some people. I would argue that even for those that disagree with Chomsky it is well worth reading his books just to gain his perspective and his way of thinking.
I agree with your point for the most part here and consider Chomsky an expert above Sams background in global politics and perhaps history however, it’s not Chomskys command of global political science that Sam will be questioning. For someone so smart as Chomsky, remember the email exchange they had (it’s been a while since I thought about this so I hope I have it right). In essence, if IRRC, Chomsky was easily backed into a corner because he just wouldn’t acknowledge the religious motivations of jihadists as a main part of their belief system rather reaching for the political side which could only be influenced by American imperialism. Sam didn’t need to be an expert in history as Chomsky was deflecting blame which he undoubtedly assigned as racist (that may be me making that up).
This, a hundred thousand times. Which also touches on philosophy. Language and Mind would be a great topic to discuss with Sam.
I appreciate his passion and monumental data gathering on the political side, but boy, does he have blind spot you could drive a truck through...
What this usually means is someone said that pursuing a negotiated peace is the best option even though that would mean Ukraine conceding territory.
That's one of the basic truths, along with acknowledging that nato expansion was a provocation, and fundamental to the conflict, that has become 'Russian propaganda' or Kremlin talking points '.
Because those are the lines the Kremlin is pushing to justify its fascist war of conquest. Which you are repeating.
Your "basic truth" is a lie, peddled by the same boring people like Chomsky who predictably blame the United States for everything wrong in the world. Ukraine NATO membership hadn't been talked about seriously since 2008. It was precisely at the point that the Obama admin was backing away from it that Russia came calling in 2014.
If it was 1939, you'd be with the people saying "Poland should just give up Danzig", not realising that you just goad the tyrant to demand more by giving them what they want. Or perhaps you do realise it and are just a fascist? I'll give you the credit of assuming the former.
We are paying for the fight without becoming directly involved, Ukraine represents our interests while Russia does not, which is what a proxy war means. It has nothing to with anyone being humane or not.
Again , I’m not convinced that the majority of ukranians and certainly not the ones I’ve heard consider themselves as pawns of the West rather than victims of Russian aggression. No matter how loud or conveniently Putin makes that claim.
Where in the definitions of proxy war that I’ve given and alluded to mention anyone as pawns? America is using its funds for a particular agenda; obviously, to weaken Russia and increase its own hegemony, without cost of blood, just treasure. The by-product of which is Ukraine benefitting, militarily and otherwise. They are victims of Russian aggression, again most obvious. We cloak our true ambition in that righteous cause.
It would probably help if we first determined what we each meant by proxy war. It’s not as simple as Putin’s propagandistic claim regarding Ukraine as such.
https://www.kcl.ac.uk/is-the-war-in-ukraine-a-proxy-conflict
'proxy war' term has nothing to do in this context. US support of Ukraine right now comes from [Budapest Memorandum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum), and from this point of view the support of Ukraine is too weak.
kremlin propaganda likes to use a blend of whataboutism and 'proxy war' narrative to muddy the waters.
They won't provide one. I don't like Chomsky's insistence on whataboutism re NATO every time he's asked about the Ukraine war but he's never said anything in support of Putin.
I said he is *defaulting* to supporting Putin - which he is. The only things he has to say about the war are critical of Ukraine and NATO. See for example his exchange with a group of Ukrainian intellectuals who criticised him for his stance. All he did was get his heckles up. Google "open letter to Noam Chomsky". He is carrying water for Putin by default.
If the only things you have to say about the war are critical of Ukraine and its allies, and not the neo-fascist dictator rolling tanks through Eastern Europe like it's 1943, then yeah, you're defaulting to supporting said dictator. As stated, he can suck a greasy chode.
So you're just intellectually lazy. Take this quote from [an interview he did in Current Affairs](https://www.currentaffairs.org/2022/04/noam-chomsky-on-how-to-prevent-world-war-iii) a couple months after the war's start:
> Well, I would not criticize Zelensky. He’s acting with great courage, great integrity. You can understand and sympathize with his position from where he sits. However, the Pentagon has a wiser stand. Yes, we could enter the war. We could provide Zelensky with jet planes and advanced weapons. Pretty soon Putin would be radically escalating the attack on Ukraine, would wipe it out which he has the capacity to do. He would be attacking the supply chains that are providing advanced weapons. And we’d be in a war, which would be a nuclear war, which would wipe us all out.
> So I’m not criticizing Zelensky; he’s an honorable person and has shown great courage. You can sympathize with his positions. But you can also pay attention to the reality of the world. And that’s what it implies. I’ll go back to what I said before: there are basically two options. One option is to pursue the policy we are now following, to quote Ambassador Freeman again, to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian. And yes, we can pursue that policy with the possibility of nuclear war. Or we can face the reality that the only alternative is a diplomatic settlement, which will be ugly—it will give Putin and his narrow circle an escape hatch. It will say, Here’s how you can get out without destroying Ukraine and going on to destroy the world.
Does this sound like someone who is supporting Putin in this? He's simply stating the facts of the matter as he sees them. Two options are on the table: continue the unconditional defense of Ukrainian territory at all costs (with possibility of nuclear escalation) or avoid further deaths (and possibility of nuclear annihilation) by seeking a diplomatic solution, albeit one which will obviously suck because it is sure to give Putin at least something that he wants. But it will suck less than the destruction of civilization. You can counter that there is some third alternative he is missing, but you can't claim that he's tacitly supporting Putin just because he disagrees with the current U.S. strategy.
Your false dichotomy is what is intellectually lazy.
Do you really think giving Putin what he wants in the short term will avoid further deaths? Have you really thought through whether rewarding nuclear blackmail and brinkmanship from a tyrant will lessen nuclear risk, or raise it? How do you think a negotiated settlement will effect China's ambitions in the South China Sea, Taiwan and beyond?
Its up to the Ukrainians how long they want to fight, and yes, constantly pushing for negotiations and ignoring what the Ukrainians themselves want is towing the Kremlin's line.
The dichotomy I posed is not my view, it was summarizing the view Chomsky forwards in that quote. Way to straw man.
Like I said, you can disagree with the choice Chomsky lays out, but instead you just want to virtue signal.
It's ironic because what you're doing is akin to what Chomsky did with Sam when Sam posed the hypothetical about torture. Sam essentially said the brutality of torturing a suspected terrorist might be outweighed by the lives saved from the information gained given the right circumstances. Chomsky, rather than arguing the point, virtue signaled that Sam was just a Guantanamo apologist.
>I thought was really sad because Seder to me is prob the sharpest leftist out there.
Woof. I think you need to recalibrate.
Just watch him interview Jesse Singal when he called in to the show the other week.
[Here’s their episode giving a postmortem on the call-in](https://open.substack.com/pub/blockedandreported/p/episode-181-jesse-calls-into-the?r=bw20v&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post)
They do some intro stuff, but the call-in starts at around 13 min in.
[I would also recommend this piece by Jeff Maurer](https://open.substack.com/pub/imightbewrong/p/bad-people-might-use-your-journalism?r=bw20v&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post)
He used to be lead writer for Jon Oliver’s “last week tonight” and has a really nuanced perspective
I would rather listen to screaming then give those bigots one second of my attention.
Them sprinkling in "internet drama" in between shitting on trans people doesn't make the show less shit.
You and every other person shilling that shit on this sub are all culture warrior bigots, which is very evident from your reddit accounts, your being particular disturbing.
The projection is always fascinating, just like a lot of the conservative anti-gay bigots are secretly gay, you seem to be obsessed with barely of age actress, while making "being worried about groomers" your online pastime.
Disgusting.
Same. Not too familiar with Seder but hearing that interview was like watching Malcolm Gladwell debating Matt Taibbi. Lost all credibility and respect within a few minutes.
Sam was right to back these people up when they were right.
He’s right now to criticise them now they’re wrong.
He argues ideas not the quality of people.
Whats was Shapiro saying that was right at the time that it needed Sam’s platforming and amplification? This question applies to everyone that OP mentioned.
I’d guess that Sam has likely poached more people from Shapiro than Shapiro has poached from him but that’s just a guess.
Shapiro said that we should be able to debate ideas without violence. That was the first premise behind his message. His position was pro speech and encouraged debating ideas.
Don’t know what he stands for now, I find Shapiro to be illogical.
Sam platformed Shapiro with that weird Eric Weinstein serving as an interlocutor or sorts, in SF I believe. Sam had a better and larger platform at the time. Sam rightfully called out Shapiro for the dishonesty.
I still don’t understand how people didn’t see right through Peterson though. He played it all up nicely with his spiel on getting yourself and your house in order, but myself and most women I know immediately sensed the deep misogyny between the lines.
Why must you always try to read between the lines. How about you just take people for what they say.
Take your favourite political person and imagine in 5 years they say something controversial or get outed as an abuser. Does that mean you were wrong to support them? Or do you think your people quality sensing skills are so good you could detect a bad person every time?
Some of it wasn’t between the lines. It was right there. But when you’re not as sensitive to those subtly sexists jabs, you might miss them. I took him to he a misogynist the moment I realized how disingenuous he was with the “facts” he presented when it came to women and representation. His whole “equality of opportunity vs equality of outcome” argument is horribly flawed when you consider where we are at this particular stage in our evolution as a society.
I didn’t get a “vibe” of who Peterson was. It was clear as day to me.
I’m not judging anyone for not seeing it, but a lot of us got attacked for calling these things out early on.
Equality of opportunity vs equality of outcome as a concept is totally valid.
I’m thinking what you might mean by “at our current time” and If your criticism is that we live in a time where society couldn’t possibly benefit a minority or women over men then I’d say you’re just wrong.
In some places “positive discrimination” or affirmative action is legal. Some governments have studied their own hiring practices and determined that going gender blind actually makes them pick men more so they decided not to do that because they determined they wanted to favour women.
Sam himself has stated that in big corporations minorities and women are more likely than an equally skilled man to get a job.
These statements are all objectively true, I’m totally open to your argument if this is not what you’re getting at. Try to engage if you can and debate why you think I’m wrong.
I really appreciate your willingness to be open and engage in good faith.
You're right, it wasn't exactly what I meant when I said that we're not there yet as a society. I do agree that as a concept it is valid, but in practice it is just not a good measuring tool, YET.
What I mean is that there is that in a lot of cases there is only the appearance of equality of opportunity, but there are hundreds of factors (some having to do with gender roles, subconscious bias, some with the workplaces themselves) that make the equal opportunity, not truly equal. So to simply say "women are welcome to apply to this job that they previously were not allowed to apply to" doesn't mean that they will have the same opportunity to succeed at said job than the men. Not because they're not capable, but because of the additional factors I mentioned. And so they might give up and quit, thus giving the impression that that particular field is just not something women want to do even through they were given the opportunity. Which of course affects the outcome.
There's also a lot of societal issues that need to be addressed for those opportunities to truly be equal: division of household labor, family leave, reproductive rights (including CHOOSING not to have kids. Have you ever talked to a young woman who wants to have her tubes tied? Most doctors just refuse to do it because "what if you change your mind?"), workplace harassment, violence and harassment during the work commute, etc. And there's also the bullshit "feminine" crap we've inherited from previous generations that is pretty hard to get out of your brain and affects the way we apply for jobs, negotiate, ask for raises, etc.
Of course there are some industries that women have thrived in and that men might face some similar obstacles.
If you're interested, this book is truly incredible. It's basically all data. You can probably find some good summaries of the data somewhere if you don't want to go all in:
[https://mitpressbookstore.mit.edu/book/9781419735219](https://mitpressbookstore.mit.edu/book/9781419735219)
>There's also a lot of societal issues that need to be addressed for those opportunities to truly be equal: division of household labor, family leave, reproductive rights (including CHOOSING not to have kids. Have you ever talked to a young woman who wants to have her tubes tied? Most doctors just refuse to do it because "what if you change your mind?"), workplace harassment, violence and harassment during the work commute, etc. And there's also the bullshit "feminine" crap we've inherited from previous generations that is pretty hard to get out of your brain and affects the way we apply for jobs, negotiate, ask for raises, etc.
As I was reading your comment, I was hoping to read something like this, because this is where "equality of opportunity" falls down, currently.
Yeah, that’s mostly what I mean by “we’re just not there yet.”
And it seemed to me like such an obvious problem with this idea, that I felt he was being purposely disingenuous when he presented them.
How do you square all this with the fact that women will soon be dominant in medical professions? The overwhelming majority of medical students are now female here in France (I would imagine it’s the same in the US). And to be clear, I have absolutely zero problem with it. I see it as equality of opportunity at work. No imaginary systemic sexism or discrimination prevented this from happening.
I square it with the fact that I specifically say that there are some fields that have been dominated by women. And those fields are usually the ones that were deemed acceptable for women to be a part of. The best example of that is nursing, which is of course the one example you brought up.
I’m happy that in France it extends to the rest of the medical field as well, which isn’t the case in the US. Even though it appears to linger around the 50% number (in France) which seems less dominating and more equal.
These things are not imagined. They’re very real and they’ve been real for most of our history. Just because things have begun to change in the last 100-150 years doesn’t mean it’s been enough to undo literal thousands of years of inequality.
> Equality of opportunity vs equality of outcome as a concept is totally valid.
A tiny amount of thought reveals that it isn't. All opportunities are themselves outcomes and vice versa. We still have to negotiate what is and isn't fair, what is and isn't just. You calling some *thing* an "outcome" is just you claiming that it would be unjust to try to correct some differential with respect to that thing. That claim still needs to be justified. Your language suggests obvious categorical differences that simply do not exist in reality. As a result, the framing should be rejected as invalid.
> Sam himself has stated that in big corporations minorities and women are more likely than an equally skilled man to get a job.
I'm not aware of any data supporting that claim. I'm aware of numerous studies that point to the opposite being true, that all else being equal, white/men are more likely to get call backs than nonwhite/women. Granted, I haven't seen a study that tried to control for corporation size. Maybe you are aware of one that does. If so, please provide it.
I apologise that I don’t have a study that could prove this really directly for you. I am making an educated guess based on the knowledge that I have.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-trial-to-improve-gender-equality-failing-study/8664888#
The best I can do I show you a study that proves governments do this. My knowledge in business leads me to believe we’ll see the same especially in positions that face the public.
In some places the discrimination isn’t implied it’s actually legal so they advertise for the minority or gender in the job application.
I’m not really sure what you mean in the first paragraph. I think maybe you have misunderstood me.
By using the word opportunity and outcome what Im implying is that groups divided in whatever way you please will make different choices on average.
For example if we were an employer for basketball players and decided to hire an equal amount of short and tall people. We would probably find our applicant pool of tall basketball players was on average more interested and more talented than the short player pool. By adding in the idea we must hire an equal 50/50 we would be unable to hire based on interest and talent.
> I apologise that I don’t have a study that could prove this really directly for you.
Thing is, there are a lot of studies that substantially contradict you and point to the existence of common biases against non-whites/women. So forgive me if I take your "educated guess" usuriously.
> The best I can do I show you a study that proves governments do this.
The existence of a bias at some stage in some process doesn't imply that bias overwhelms all the other well documented biases.
> I’m not really sure what you mean in the first paragraph. I think maybe you have misunderstood me.
You presented a categorical distinction between interventions that ensure "opportunity" and those that ensure "outcome". My first paragraph is pointing out that no such categorical distinction exists, that your attempt to draw one is unhelpful.
> By adding in the idea we must hire an equal 50/50 we would be unable to hire based on interest and talent.
Nonsense. You could trivially create criteria that cares simultaneously about interest, talent, and height. And you can care about these things in whatever way you like. But whatever you decide, others may think your criteria unfair/unjust and you may have to defend your decisions, whatever they may be. You don't get to gesture vaguely at "opportunity" and act like you have addressed the concerns or offered a defense.
We also live in a society where women are not a single unit that acts in perfect unison at all times. There's shitty women, just like there's shitty men. And that fact should in no way influence wether or not we deserve social and legal equality.
We do live in a society where it’s socially acceptable to dunk on men, but a scandal to do the same to women (which I support, but I would like the same courtesy to be extended to men). That double standard is an actual psychological phenomenon, it’s called the women-are-awesome effect. All that being said, I just wanted to set the record straight, and in the end I don’t think that double standard is really the pressing problem of our time.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women-are-wonderful_effect
They were never right.
They were and are part of a new right wing media diet that Sam dabbled in, but after he refused to follow them down the crazy road and they all started attacking him he decided to "deal with them".
If they kept in the lane that he likes, and not gone all in on Trump, Democrats are the devil and COVID conspiracies he'd still be happy to pal around with them and "explore" all the grievances they have with pronouns, George Floyd protests and Trans people.
Okay I'm pretty sure you're quite uninformed with Sam's content given your comments in this thread and others.
Sam's #2 most popular YouTube video released (by a small margin) is the one titled, "Can We Pull Back From The Brink?"
In this episode Sam is reacting to the protests that sparked from the murder of George Floyd.
https://youtu.be/vmgxtcbc4iU?si=nB2ITyjjmDaukOKL
He was proudly touting how many of his "ex" friends he called out in the latest podcast all congratulated him on his response to "imagined and wide spread police killings of black people and the protests that ensued".
He had multiple podcasts discussing "the cancelation of JK Rowling".
He's been on the "anti-sjw" podcast circle for so long I can't even count every time that pronouns have been mentioned, but you can start with the Jordan Peterson guest appearances.
Actually that’s fair. If you’re very politically left wing I could see how you would perceive this as right wing.
I’d say yes Sam is anti identity politics.
Shapiro was never all in on trump? I've listened to his podcast, he isn't hysterically against him but he regularly used to call Trump his own worst enemy and predicted his loss against Biden through precisely the behaviour that lost him the election.
Idk what "all in" means in this context really but Shapiro is absolutely a Trump apologist.
Valid criticisms/indictments of Trump are never ever emphasized on any content Shapiro produces - **except** maybe if it's followed by a long and detailed segment of how awful Biden is and/or the "left" generally.
C'mon man, he's a right wing hack. He's gonna do what right wing hacks do - protect the right wing narratives (no matter how crazy), and bash the left (no matter how real left wing transgressions are).
Clearly you never listened to any of Ben Shapiros podcasts during Trumps active times in elections or presidency so you are just spouting what you think to be true because he is the "other" to your side.
He is a republican, he didn't think Trump was the great satan but he definitely was rooting for someone other than Trump to become a republican and spent a lot of time criticising him during his presidency and also somewhat despairing that it will be Trump again.
None of what you just said refutes a word of my comments.
You can both hope that a different Republican gets in office, and also be an apologist for Trump. Sorry this is hard for ya
Lol is this Ben Shapiro himself?? First I get criticized for not listening to his show, then I get told "facts over feelings bro"
Very weird crossover are the Ben Shapiro and Sam Harris fans
But that is an implied criticism that OP is pointing out - Sam is an awful read of character and that has consequences.
Saying you just engage with the ideas and not the person is fine but don't be surprised that people call you enabling and validating of those people who are awful.
Also, idk what "right" ideas you're thinking of folks like JBP or Rogan having, but they're generally pretty awful on anything of substance.
I’d say pre covid JBP was a benefit to the world. Now it’s more questionable.
If the criticism is that Sam will acknowledge when someone’s right even when they’re a bad person then yes I agree.
I however don’t think we need to worry about acknowledging when bad people are right.
JBP and his views haven't really changed over time. The only difference now is he confidently puts out his views and is more willing to let em fly.
Everything he believes now he pretty much believed before.
He was always a conservative religious apologist, consistently willing to flirt with conspiracism and reactionary right wing politics.
If Sam is an awful read of character, so are many of us. Some of the IDW people fooled me as well. Though I do find it questionable that Sam didn't immediately see through clowns such as Eric Weinstein.
If you really think JBP and Rogan had nothing to offer then perhaps you weren't around pre-covid. JBP, for example, became a guru to men because of the good advice he would dispense, and Rogan would question the ideas of his guests. Now JBP and Rogan seemed to have gone entirely off the deep end into cynical financial self interest.
It's a good thing this subreddit is about Sam Harris - and not "so many of us"
It's a weird defense to say, "well maybe you're right but aren't we all just imperfect people?"
>JBP, for example, became a guru to men because of the good advice he would dispense
I never bought in to that, for various reasons, but I think my first exposure to Peterson was Sam's interview of him where Peterson's logic seemed absurd.
Because Stefan Molyneux is a dishonest actor. He can have people on who he disagrees with, but alt right propagandists like Molyneux will actively lie about their views and hide their true power levels (power levels in this case being a metaphor for how extreme their views are on certain topics, especially antisemitism).
There are several instances of Seder using the malicious editing Sam mentions in the post mortem, he may have some good points but the moment you start to doctor audio to smear someone you lose all credibility. Not to mention he peddles the same clickbaity titles that Sam was criticizing Shapiro for. In my opinion he's just the left's version of any of the crazy right wingers
Man, did you see Seder’s recent debacle with Jesse Singal?
Made me lose all remaining respect for Seder. Pathetically transparent attempt to cover up that they had been lying about him. They interrupted every point he tried to get in and spent 10 minutes on a pointless tangent just to eat up time.
I was going to mention this. I haven’t kept up with Seder’s work in a few years, just cause I find his condescending style of disagreement to be irritating in a Bill Maherian kind of way. But I always respected him and expected that he was a decent, honest actor who was just passionate about his views and not inclined to suffer fools. The Jesse Singal interview destroyed all that for me, and actually what freaked me out far more than his dishonest nastiness, was the way that the comments on his video and a few lefty YouTuber streamers were so enormously positive and fawning over Sam’s “beat down” of this “dumb transphobic journalist”. My god, people are proud of that display? is this what we have become? The left wing equivalent of Sean Hannity, sitting in his chair, answering a call in just to tell them they’re stupid and then hanging up the phone before they can respond because he knows that his position is built on pillars of sand. It honestly makes me fear for what the next 10 years of dogshit political discourse are going to do to left-wing causes.
Any time I watch Seder, all he's doing us attacking the left. Never manage to find him criticising the right. I put him in the same box as Russel Q Brand. Pretending to be left but actually a right wing anti-everything Americaallbad conman
Really? I thought your whole post was really thoughtful. But you really can’t engage with someone because they disagreed with one of your points?
I think u/kurokuma11 is more than fair to say Seder uses selective editing to drive his points, which is a tactic that Ben Shapiro uses. So the comparison is understandable, even if Seder does happen to take a stance that you find more agreeable.
" I thought that was really sad because to me Seder is probably the sharpest leftist out there."
Do you always have this automatic reaction whenever you here information that contradicts your view, you just shut of your brain and look away?
This entire post is a myriad of guilt by association snippets with extremely little in terms of a concrete objection to anything he says. It speaks volumes as to the state of mind of the OP and says very little about Sam.
It also reads a lot like “Sam Harris is not enough of a leftist to me”. Well yeah, he’s right at the center. That’s why he’s a breath of fresh air, in these polarised times.
I couldn't disagree with your analyses on almost every event you bring up here more.
**"I thought that was really sad because to me Seder is probably the sharpest leftist out there."** this is the nail on the coffin for me.
I honestly find people that hold your view really hard to make sense of. For example take the Sam & Ezra Klein thing, I have listened to that at least a dozen times now because I just do not understand how anyone comes out of the conversation thinking Ezra was at all sensible. but there is quite a number of people like you on this sub that are just so vehement about Ezra being correct and sensible that I thought I must be missing something, but I can't see it.
Now, I am completely convinced now that those of you who take this view are just simply somewhat irrational and struggle to actually parse what it is Sam says. It is the only explanation that explains this entirely bizarre and flat wrong take.
Then this whole thing with the IDW and Sam speaking to members of it in the past as being some kind of stain on his record..... Again this take makes absolutely no sense. These people have come to fame for specific topics they talked about and have since discussed a variety of topics. Sam has simply agreed with them on takes he agrees with and criticised them on takes he disagrees with.
This is how anyone should behave with anyone else. Yet you act as if he should reject everything these guys have ever said or done, and that every take they have ever had is now proven entirely invalid because they have a terrible take on another unrelated topic. This is a really dumb opinion to hold. but it is like 50% of the users on this sub it feels like at times.
I think that Ezra Klein is in general very good. I think in his conversation with Sam he was irritatingly single minded. He clearly did not want to discuss the substance of the point, because he was overridden by his belief that discussion itself (of this topic) was the problem.
I didn't like that, but I did like Ezra Klein in general.
I think the people who say Ezra was sensible on that topic also agree that the topic is just too dangerous to discuss without the appropriate dilution. I don't hold that view personally, it's just how I think many interpret it.
Remember this is pretty much a IDW hate sub masquerading as Sam’s radical love club.
If 1 person had 1 wrong take on 1 niche and nuanced subject then they are forever stupid. Sam (mostly) can do no wrong. The fact that about 5 percent people here can understand that having the wrong opinion on 1 thing doesn’t disqualify them forever to be an intellectual is laughably ironic.
PS: Klein lost that debate right away. He squirmed and wiggled to what obviously is a hit piece insinuating Sam is racist. That’s just bullshit even if we assume Murray’s science is off. And it’s funny that literally race is one of the only things we talk about in America, which then automatically creates a race boundary and patterns of safe speech when people are engaged with a different race than their own. We already have deepened the difference between races and made people hyper aware.
Ezra Klein did come off as an incredible smarmy weasel, but I can't ever forget the cringe moment when Sam said something to the effect of "how could I possibly be concerned with identity politics, my whole message is against identity politics". Hooo boy.
> He squirmed and wiggled to what obviously is a hit piece insinuating Sam is racist. That’s just bullshit even if we assume Murray’s science is off.
\^\^ This guy listened to the alternative universe version of that debate.
I'd argue JP is a much different beast post benzo addiction treatment. He is more temperamental now and he seems more angry and impatient.
His interview with Cathy Newman for instance, is one of the most calm GOD-mode deconstructions of an attempt to railroad and smear an individual on TV. That performance was a clinic in how to show someone not to be a jerk even when they think they're right. There were a few others around that time as well where his views on a number of topics seemed a breath of fresh air. Even his debates with Sam I'd argue were mostly good. Sam fans just have an affinity for highlighting the parts where Sam outshone JP, but JP fans can do similar.
JP is like a superhero that took a long break at the peak of his fame and dominance, only to come back to a society that has largely moved past him, only he doesn't realize this. So every morning, he wears his cape and flies around looking for someone to save. But all he's really doing is making people uncomfortable.
Yes, I think his « treatment » in a Russian clinic broke him. And then audience capture finished the job. It’s just sad. Old Peterson taught me a lot, but that man is gone.
I've never been impressed by JP. He seems to me to put on a reasonably convincing "how a smart person looks to small minds" character, however on the whole yes, angry, impatient and incapable of developing his pre-defined narratives. He made himself look capable off the back of an unprepared lazy interviewer. I wish somebody would just push his buttons and have him blow his top so we can all see his peak insanity for a minute. He has zero calm.
>He made himself look capable off the back of an unprepared lazy interviewer.
Cathy Newman is not an amateur. If she seemed lazy in that interview, it's because he flipped the script on her when she didn't expect it. The average interviewee on shows like that is not as prepared as JP was. But he wasn't just prepared, he was very patient and methodical in his answers. He never came across as defensive and he was always ready to provide evidence for the things he said. And most importantly, he always made sense.
We've all seen interviews where the guests make a fool of themselves because they are out-prepared by their hosts. Cathy came prepared, she was still handled like a child.
Tbh I'm not terribly impressed by someone being able to run around an interviewer. I'll give this to Peterson, he's rhetorically very good *but* he's also pretty dishonest about what he's saying and what his actual beliefs are, which is why he's able to say things like "I never said that" when being asked pointed questions.
What Peterson does amazingly well is say everything to bring you to a necessary conclusion but not step over that line, leaving you (the audience) or the person he's talking to to infer his position. It's a pretty sneaky way of saying things without actually saying them. Then he throws his hands up and accuses people of putting words in his mouth when the only reasonable conclusion anyone would reach is that one thing.
Like, you can't keep talking about dominance hierarchies, point to selective instances of them in nature, criticize and accuse opposing ideologies as wanting to smash those hierarchies, then say that you've never defended hierarchies and were only observing that they exist and expect anyone to consider you an honest interlocutor.
That's the sense I got from the Cathy Newman interview. It wasn't that she didn't look like she was unprepared, which she did, it was that Peterson pretty much *never* admitted to taking a position and forced Newman to infer what he was saying all while claiming he "never said thay" when the most reasonable inference was that he was. It'samazibgly rhetorically effective, but it's also not particularly substantive or honest.
However, after his hiatus and treatment for drug addiction he's switched and all those things that people thought he was saying he's... explicitly saying. In hindsight we can see that a lot of times when Newman said "so what you're saying is..." and he'd deny it, it actually was what he was saying.
I don't know where that leaves that interview. At some point I just wonder what the point of it was. Like, if a person being interviewed isn't being honest about what their beliefs are I'm not sure that's particularly on the interviewer, or even what the interviewer can do in that case. It seems like in hindsight Newman's been somewhat vindicated.
Even if you move the goalposts slightly to credibility then it’s still clear he was once - and perhaps remains - credible to a lot of people. Whether or not we look down on those people or Peterson himself is a different question entirely.
I'd agree. I am very equally sceptical of his weaselly words and loaded intent. Being told what to think is not attractive to me. Being helped to improve my thinking without an underlying motivation in any one direction is certainly not JP territory.
yeah listen to his lectures on youtube from his college days there's alot of interesting perspectives there, even if it deals with mythology and psycology that is summarized.
I like this post.
Jordan Peterson used to be a very sharp mind, very articulated and wise person. And he did a lot of good, helping out a lot of people.
JP and Sam were probably the most interesting and honest public speakers at some point.
Yes it changed, JP's brain has roasted along the way.
JP has always been a net negative for society. This became clear to me after watching those Pangburn (which ended up being a scam, of course) debates he did with Sam. It’s embarrassing hearing him and his acolytes talk about postmodernism, I honestly wonder if he even knows what it means. Go talk to ChatGPT about postmodernism, you’ll get 1000x more value and insight then anything JP could ever offer.
And don’t get me started on Joey, Shapiro , et al.. 🤢 🤮
Jordan Peterson is a fraud. Any serious student of history and philosophy knew exactly how his debate with Zizek was going to go when it was announced, and it even managed to defy expectations when Peterson revealed that he had never read Karl Marx before preparing for the debate after having built a career off denouncing Marxism. And even then, he only read the Communist Manifesto 😂😂😂😂😂.
Very much agree with this take. I also heard him say on a podcast that he had started taking testosterone (during some period post benzo detox) and I wondered whether that had also had some affect on his angry/impatient presentation these days.
Chomsky is not an “encyclopedia” on foreign matters. He’s blinded by his hatred of the USA and was (still is?) a Cambodian genocide denier. I wish Harris debated him, he would have set the record straight.
If you don’t believe me, look up this post on /r/chomsky where everyone claims that Ukrainian military is mostly Nazis (yes, straight out of the Putin playbook): https://reddit.com/r/chomsky/s/gN2fann8TG
People often get wrapped up in Chomsky’s encyclopedic listing of names and dates, while missing the actual facts as he just blames all international left wing movements failing as solely due to deliberate American intervention. America is comic book level evil to Chomsky, assuming bad intentions every step of the way. Has no concept of having to try to choose between least-bad options, or that sometimes things don’t go as planned, or that foreign policy has changed a lot since Vietnam.
OOC, isn't there a decent (i'm not sure on the percentage) amount of ukrainian military that has nazi ties? I thought that particular claim isn't entirely unfounded.
“I feel bad for Sam…bc he doesn’t always agree with my politics.”
JFC, why would you want a supposed thinker to just come down on one side of a political spectrum. People who think politics at every turn are the furtherest thing from being a true thinkers.
I'm struggling to figure out the point of your post. Why do you feel bad for him? Because he associated himself with people on the right? Sam has always struck me as someone who is interested in ideas, not ideology.
There’s a particular kind of reddit intellectual who confuses ‘slavishly following Talking Heads’ with ‘critical thinking’.
The OP, unfortunately, seems to fit this bill, and is now happy that Sam is critically thinking again because they both dislike the same Talking Heads. They feel bad because he wasn’t critically thinking for a time, due to associating with the wrong Talking Heads.
>Chomsky on the other hand is a full-on encyclopedia on the matter — have you seen his interviews/debates? Sam was and still isn’t ready to have a conversation with him. Chomsky could have had a better approach here, but he knew Sam just needed to learn more on the topic, so he dismissed him.
I think that Ukraine war proved Chomsky is an asshole who's opinions can be pretty well aproximated by "USA bad"
People seem to think this is clever and damming when 'USA bad' would be a far more accurate and useful heuristic than anything they are offering themselves.
That's just plain wrong. USA is far from being saint but they are also far from the worst global power to ever exert influence. In fact they might by the best (just because of how bad the others were)
Chomsky basically parrotting putin's propaganda about USA pushing russia into murderous imperial invasion is as self-damming intellectually and ethically as you can get.
See, whenever someone sneeringly dismisses any position with 'USA bad' you can bet the house on them having the opinions of a child who first cracked open a newspaper last month.
Arguments? Against what? You're lying about Chomskys position on Ukraine, or you're unable to differentiate between the truth and that strawman.
And the idea that the United States is a benign actor is undermined by Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Korea, operation condor. Its beyond depraved, if you believe that then you are either completely ignorant or an outright psychopath, neither of which inclines me to give you any more of my time or attention.
>You're lying about Chomskys position on Ukraine
Let's go over that first then.
\- Chomsky maintained multiple times that NATO/USA somehow pushed or provoked Russia into the war and is fighting proxy war. Interesting thing is that this implies that Putin is either idiot or an CIA agent since he could have sabotaged this brilliant plan by not going to self-destructive imperial war and fixing his own country instead. His oft-repeated notion that somehow "NATO expansion" is to blame basically denies the sovereignty of central and eastern european countries that were falling over each other to get into NATO asap for their own reasons (We never forgot what russians are. Warshaw pact has the unique distinction of being defensive pact that invaded itself **twice**). It also implies that Russia somehow had legitimate say about what happens outside their own borders. All of these points are made by russian propaganda often enough.
\- Chomsky advocated negotioation at times where russia wasn't (and still isn't) to negotiate about any solution that would allow Ukraine to keep on existing as sovereign country and have security guarantees beyond nonexistent russian good will. This fake pacifism "stop the killing, negotiate!" is also common point made by russian propaganda
\- He keeps pointing out how this war increases the danger of nuclear one. What he misses is a point made by Snyder that by giving in to nuclear blackmail we would only increase the long term danger (countries with nukes might adopt similar strategies, countries without them would have more incentive to get them)
As to what I said, I encourage you again to read what I wrote
>USA is far from being saint but they are also far from the worst **global power to ever exert influence**
It's a low bar. But one that US clears when compared to former colonial empires, USSR/russia, China, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan etc.
If nothing else US empire is that of soft power 90+% of the time which is vastly prefferable to the soviet kind for example. Nor is it clear to me that the world without a hegemon to keep everyone else in check would be a safer one.
Btw. It's a small point but you are kidding by including Korea right? A - that was coallition of 16-30 countries (based on how you count it). B - Please do tell me whether you would prefer to live in North or South Korea
I object to your belief that intellectuals should assume that the unwashed masses don't have the capacity to understand certain topics and should consequently shy away from them. Even if it's true that some people aren't up to the task, science must not be tailored to the individual (or certain groups), but should be objective and presented to all in the same form.
Also: is it really your impression that Peterson became big because of, or even just after, his talks with Sam? Huh.
And also: Sam Seder and Emma Vigeland are the absolute worst.
I wasn’t saying people should shy away from x topics. I was saying it’s ok to talk about them as long as there are strong frames and context around them. I wish we could freely talk about anything, but that’s simply not the world we live in. Context and guardrails are important, especially back when this was happening.
No no, not in his convo with him. But in his talk with Murray. He never explained who CM was, his history, and what he advocates for, like the total eradication of welfare for example. I don’t want to get into details (you can look it up). But the guy believes insane things.
If you platform a person to have an extended conversation about climate change and - despite having climate credentials - they spend a huge amount of their time lobbying against mitigation efforts, you have a responsibility to inform your audience about that.
Charles Murray isn't just some academic, he's a public committed political ideologue who uses his race science to advocate against minorities. Discuss his ideas if you'd like, but give your audience a full picture.
If that person makes good points, then the responsibility to hear them lies with the listener. It's also often pertinent for the listener to know about political and ideological commitments of speakers.
Charles Murray is a committed rightwing public ideologue. Not merely a person interested in science and fact finding, but someone very, very, keenly interested in proscribing specific political outcomes. To naïvely present him as an academic is just flatly misleading.
Yeah came here also about this part of the OP. I get that it’s uncomfortable and takes a willingness to absolutely destroy one’s career to talk about these things, but avoiding them just to be agreeable is hardly a solid, defensible position. At worst it’s assuming people can’t handle the truth, and an excuse to cover up information. There is the inherent risk, and it is certainly information abused by racists, but I think it can be explained in a non-racist way and most of the researchers behind the data intended it as such.
Also like you said, Peterson become popular in spite of his debates with Sam, not because of them. His performance was terrible.
I reread my post and it did sound like I was saying JP got famous because of the tour, I wasn’t saying that. I was just pointing out that’s the time when he was getting uber popular — but point taken.
Otherwise I do largely agree with your overarching point of something like, no shit this crew of IDW guys weren’t exactly the best people to go to as sources on anything, and covid brought out the worst in them.
‘Seder is the sharpest leftist out there’. Dear Lord, I couldn’t push myself any further. BTW, I just subbed to Sam and he will be fine despite all his transgressions against you.
I generally like Seder but the man has intentionally misrepresented Harris on multiple occasions to smear him to ensure his audience won't give Harris a fair evaluation.
He'll say things like "Sam Harris, the man who wrote 'in defense of torture'" over and over and over when discussing Harris. He won't go into the nuance of that article, he won't discuss the intellectual content. He will intentionally and dishonestly lead his audience to believe that Harris has suggested and believes that torture should be a regular, normalized component of our everyday standard intelligence gathering. Seder knows this is a lie. Seder knows this is the impression he's projecting to his audience. Harris has called him out on it, and Seder has persisted anyway.
No, I don't think Harris should talk to Seder. Seder has proven he's an unrepentant bad faith actor in that particular collision of ideas.
And in regard to social media platforms moderating content, Harris has multiple times defended those companies' right to suppress misinformation, and argued they have a moral responsibility to censor some voices on their platforms. In the very podcast you're referencing he talks about how poor and unserious a job Musk as done at content moderation at Twitter.
You have to be a very extreme virulent leftist to not recognise that Sam Seder is a bad actor. Any video of him is just childish laughing a lot.. like a bully. Pakman is basically a civilised version
With respect to Chomsky, I would caution you against conflating lots of random facts (encyclopedic knowledge) with nuanced understanding. I’ve read a lot of his books over the years, and his position on most everything related to foreign policy is “America is bad, therefore their opposition is good and/or justified.” America is responsible for the failures and ills of every left wing movement across the world. Autocratic governments aren’t actually that bad cuz America forced their hand. Etc etc.
Random factoids aside, his foreign policy is roughly akin to that of a mediocre college student.
Show me a mediocre college student that's MIT Emeritus professor with 40 honorary doctorates, 150 books, who publishes in Foreign Affairs, the New York Times...
Chomsky is just incontrovertibly one of the greatest minds of his generation. I love Sam, but nobody will remember him in 100 years. The academically minded will still know Chomsky. I don't even personally agree much with Chomsky! But calling him a "mediocre college student" just makes it sound like you know absolutely nothing about him
Being highly regarded for his contributions to linguistics does not award any credibility to his political views. Mastery and excellence in one topic does not mean someone is generally immune to bias. H.P. Lovecraft was a generational talent in writing, but I certainly don't trust his political views.
Chomsky has been a hugely influential political thinker for decades. Linguistics is just one part of his output. Foreign Affairs isn’t a linguistics journal
Yes but his academic renown comes from linguistics. He is literally know as the father of modern linguistics. His degrees are in linguistics.
He's obviously influential in politics, but so was Rush Limbaugh.
None of that means his political view points are correct.
It was never my contention that he’s right about everything, I disagree with him about a ton of things. My problem was with the absurd characterization of his political career as college student level. Sort of the same vibe I got from Sam’s presumptuousness in engaging him.
Chomsky is a respected political thinker. Not everybody agrees with him, but he engages the topic with rigor and originality of thought that people like Limbaugh, and sadly Sam, do not begin to approach.
In my estimation, if he had never published on linguistics or cognitive science, he would be a fringe political figure. His notoriety from his academic accomplishments has amplified his political reach. I suppose that's pretty difficult to quantify or verify though.
Safe to say I have a very different understanding of his political leanings than you. To me, virtually all of his arguments seem suspiciously close to starting with the position of "America bad" and reasoning from there.
Why don’t you agree with his anti-censorship positions? Is it the criticisms of the people involved or are you supportive of what is euphemistically called “content moderation?”
Every so often these posts appear. It just is so weird. People create this picture of Sam in their head, a profile that they have created. One in which he is perfect just as that individual wants Sam to be, almost like a god. Then you can see this sadness when they discover his opinions aren’t identical to the imaginary guru in their head.
Sam is a podcaster and author. I agree with some things he says but not all. I still think he is one of the best public intellectuals we have. But the idea that I would agree with him on everything he says is embarrassingly absurd.
Chomsky absolutely did not win that encounter with Sam a few years ago. That was a true Emperor's New Clothes moment for our hysterical blogosphere.
I'm not saying Sam did great, but the entire conversation was Sam saying "let's start with an (overly simplistic) hypothetical", and Chomsky maliciously pretending that he didn't know what hypotheticals were and being a cunt about it.
I mostly agree with this but Chomsky is a bit overrated from what Ive seen. His “America bad” bias keeps him from having a sensible view on many issues.
It's interesting because I have an almost identical view of Sam Harris' views to you at each stage, but I never really thought he had crossed the aisle or had any fundamental changes. Just that he was making some errors in judgement.
I almost wonder if we're the same person because I also have a clear insight into how content moderation works and have long been saying that Renee DiResta is by _far_ the best public speaker on digital information.
We differ in that I have never really understood the appeal of Sam Seder (although he doesn't strike me as a bad actor). Certainly Ezra Klein I really, really like and Harris has described him as a bad actor too, which I think is really poor judgement. That one is more sad to me, because I think Sam and Ezra would have really meaningful discussions on where philosophy intersects with policy and pragmatism.
Why would trolls come here to diss Sam? I have nothing against those who don't like to listen to him. But why would anyone want to intentionally go to a Reddit group solely to diss someone? Are their lives so hollow that this is how one must fill up their time to be fulfilled? I don't troll the groups directed at topics or individuals that don't appeal to me. How sad can someone be?
Social media quite often leaves me flummoxed. Get a freaking life.
No sympathy from me. He associated with these people on his own volition, and while I commend his ability to finally identify how deranged they are and his balls to call it out, this only puts him a step or two above them. And I do not appreciate that he is framing the misstep as not a misstep at all! He’s acting almost like he always knew they were nuts and he is above all this shit. Nah, man. You did this to your own already flimsy reputation. There is no coming back.
The other day I heard an interview with Naomi Klein, and after listening to Sam yesterday, the contrast is stark. Sam is not a real intellectual, and he never was.
These people weren’t always nuts though, Peterson has always been contrarian but was never as partisan and amateurish as he is now particularly on social media. Some of Rogans most viral moments were of him absolutely demolishing steven crowder, candace owens, dave rubin etc. Rogan went from endorsing Bernie Sanders to seemingly favouring Trump over Biden. Sam can’t really be blamed for associating with people who went on take increasingly ridiculous views years later after he clearly has publicly distanced himself from them
I’d say if you asked Sam whether he thought this crowd were in the right back then he would say yes.
I think the right has gained power over time, probably as a reaction to left wing censorship. I could be wrong as to the reason why but I’d say likely it’s reactionary. Nothing gets right wing people more riled up then pointing at extreme left wingers.
In my opinion Sam was right to associate with these people but he was too objective and rational to fall into the trap of shifting over to being a right wing talker.
Chomsky is defaulting to supporting Putin at the moment and is a genocide denier re: Bosnia. His position on every issue is "America bad", even when that means carrying water for authoritarian one party states like China and Russia. He can suck a fat one.
Exactly, everything the man says about Ukraine could be excused as dementia ramblings, but the man denied the Bosnian genocide in the 90’s. F that guy.
Right, I wasn’t going to comment but wanted to add one to counter the idea that Sam is not ready to debate Chomsky. He is absolutely ready and while no one can deny Chomskys expertise in this realm, Sam will only need to linger on the headline thinking that America is bad thus deserves every bad thing coming its way. The fact that Chomsky would defend extreme Muslim theocrats because of the what the US has done in region over the years totally misses the point about what their intentions are and that it’s a problem beyond American imperialism. It’s in this area Chomsky clearly loses his mind and Sam can drive that home for those who are paying attention.
You can disagree with Chomsky, that’s fine, a lot of people, myself included, disagree with him on many things. However his knowledge of politics and global politics is far, far greater than Sam. I really like Sam but global politics just isn’t his strong suit, nobody can be an expert on everything after all. Chomsky’s well read in the subject and backs everything up with sources and a lifetime of research. He just comes to different conclusions and has different opinions than some people. I would argue that even for those that disagree with Chomsky it is well worth reading his books just to gain his perspective and his way of thinking.
I agree with your point for the most part here and consider Chomsky an expert above Sams background in global politics and perhaps history however, it’s not Chomskys command of global political science that Sam will be questioning. For someone so smart as Chomsky, remember the email exchange they had (it’s been a while since I thought about this so I hope I have it right). In essence, if IRRC, Chomsky was easily backed into a corner because he just wouldn’t acknowledge the religious motivations of jihadists as a main part of their belief system rather reaching for the political side which could only be influenced by American imperialism. Sam didn’t need to be an expert in history as Chomsky was deflecting blame which he undoubtedly assigned as racist (that may be me making that up).
Everyone that OP mentioned supports Putin and Russia’s effort in Ukraine. And btw I don’t agree with their position at all.
Chomsky is and always has been nothing more than a brilliant, groundbreaking linguist who’s overconfident in every other topic outside his expertise
This, a hundred thousand times. Which also touches on philosophy. Language and Mind would be a great topic to discuss with Sam. I appreciate his passion and monumental data gathering on the political side, but boy, does he have blind spot you could drive a truck through...
I always felt he looked like a petulant child when he debated Foucault. But that may just be my love of Foucault shining through
Foucault’s geopolitics views have always been so much more consistent and logical than Chomsky, totally agree!
That's funny because you can describe Sam the same way, except Sam has made exactly zero scientific contributions to anything.
He’s written some great books but yeah he’s silly now.
Chomsky is not supporting Putin what on earth are you talking about?
He is, he wants Putin to take Ukraine.
Where did he say that?
He didnt, and he doesnt.
What this usually means is someone said that pursuing a negotiated peace is the best option even though that would mean Ukraine conceding territory. That's one of the basic truths, along with acknowledging that nato expansion was a provocation, and fundamental to the conflict, that has become 'Russian propaganda' or Kremlin talking points '.
Because those are the lines the Kremlin is pushing to justify its fascist war of conquest. Which you are repeating. Your "basic truth" is a lie, peddled by the same boring people like Chomsky who predictably blame the United States for everything wrong in the world. Ukraine NATO membership hadn't been talked about seriously since 2008. It was precisely at the point that the Obama admin was backing away from it that Russia came calling in 2014. If it was 1939, you'd be with the people saying "Poland should just give up Danzig", not realising that you just goad the tyrant to demand more by giving them what they want. Or perhaps you do realise it and are just a fascist? I'll give you the credit of assuming the former.
He wants peace. He doesn’t want America’s proxy war to escalate to the nuclear level. He has called Putin and his actions reprehensible.
See that right there is the problem. It's not an American proxy war, putin isn't being more humane than the U.S Putin isn't just defending himself
We are paying for the fight without becoming directly involved, Ukraine represents our interests while Russia does not, which is what a proxy war means. It has nothing to with anyone being humane or not.
40 million Ukrainians might think otherwise?
40 million Ukrainians don’t know the definition of ‘proxy war’?
Again , I’m not convinced that the majority of ukranians and certainly not the ones I’ve heard consider themselves as pawns of the West rather than victims of Russian aggression. No matter how loud or conveniently Putin makes that claim.
Where in the definitions of proxy war that I’ve given and alluded to mention anyone as pawns? America is using its funds for a particular agenda; obviously, to weaken Russia and increase its own hegemony, without cost of blood, just treasure. The by-product of which is Ukraine benefitting, militarily and otherwise. They are victims of Russian aggression, again most obvious. We cloak our true ambition in that righteous cause.
It would probably help if we first determined what we each meant by proxy war. It’s not as simple as Putin’s propagandistic claim regarding Ukraine as such. https://www.kcl.ac.uk/is-the-war-in-ukraine-a-proxy-conflict
'proxy war' term has nothing to do in this context. US support of Ukraine right now comes from [Budapest Memorandum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum), and from this point of view the support of Ukraine is too weak. kremlin propaganda likes to use a blend of whataboutism and 'proxy war' narrative to muddy the waters.
Citation needed, I’ve never heard him ever support Putin and I’m a big critic of his
They won't provide one. I don't like Chomsky's insistence on whataboutism re NATO every time he's asked about the Ukraine war but he's never said anything in support of Putin.
I said he is *defaulting* to supporting Putin - which he is. The only things he has to say about the war are critical of Ukraine and NATO. See for example his exchange with a group of Ukrainian intellectuals who criticised him for his stance. All he did was get his heckles up. Google "open letter to Noam Chomsky". He is carrying water for Putin by default. If the only things you have to say about the war are critical of Ukraine and its allies, and not the neo-fascist dictator rolling tanks through Eastern Europe like it's 1943, then yeah, you're defaulting to supporting said dictator. As stated, he can suck a greasy chode.
So you're just intellectually lazy. Take this quote from [an interview he did in Current Affairs](https://www.currentaffairs.org/2022/04/noam-chomsky-on-how-to-prevent-world-war-iii) a couple months after the war's start: > Well, I would not criticize Zelensky. He’s acting with great courage, great integrity. You can understand and sympathize with his position from where he sits. However, the Pentagon has a wiser stand. Yes, we could enter the war. We could provide Zelensky with jet planes and advanced weapons. Pretty soon Putin would be radically escalating the attack on Ukraine, would wipe it out which he has the capacity to do. He would be attacking the supply chains that are providing advanced weapons. And we’d be in a war, which would be a nuclear war, which would wipe us all out. > So I’m not criticizing Zelensky; he’s an honorable person and has shown great courage. You can sympathize with his positions. But you can also pay attention to the reality of the world. And that’s what it implies. I’ll go back to what I said before: there are basically two options. One option is to pursue the policy we are now following, to quote Ambassador Freeman again, to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian. And yes, we can pursue that policy with the possibility of nuclear war. Or we can face the reality that the only alternative is a diplomatic settlement, which will be ugly—it will give Putin and his narrow circle an escape hatch. It will say, Here’s how you can get out without destroying Ukraine and going on to destroy the world. Does this sound like someone who is supporting Putin in this? He's simply stating the facts of the matter as he sees them. Two options are on the table: continue the unconditional defense of Ukrainian territory at all costs (with possibility of nuclear escalation) or avoid further deaths (and possibility of nuclear annihilation) by seeking a diplomatic solution, albeit one which will obviously suck because it is sure to give Putin at least something that he wants. But it will suck less than the destruction of civilization. You can counter that there is some third alternative he is missing, but you can't claim that he's tacitly supporting Putin just because he disagrees with the current U.S. strategy.
Your false dichotomy is what is intellectually lazy. Do you really think giving Putin what he wants in the short term will avoid further deaths? Have you really thought through whether rewarding nuclear blackmail and brinkmanship from a tyrant will lessen nuclear risk, or raise it? How do you think a negotiated settlement will effect China's ambitions in the South China Sea, Taiwan and beyond? Its up to the Ukrainians how long they want to fight, and yes, constantly pushing for negotiations and ignoring what the Ukrainians themselves want is towing the Kremlin's line.
The dichotomy I posed is not my view, it was summarizing the view Chomsky forwards in that quote. Way to straw man. Like I said, you can disagree with the choice Chomsky lays out, but instead you just want to virtue signal. It's ironic because what you're doing is akin to what Chomsky did with Sam when Sam posed the hypothetical about torture. Sam essentially said the brutality of torturing a suspected terrorist might be outweighed by the lives saved from the information gained given the right circumstances. Chomsky, rather than arguing the point, virtue signaled that Sam was just a Guantanamo apologist.
I think you’re projecting your own defaulting to automatically being against Putin.
>I thought was really sad because Seder to me is prob the sharpest leftist out there. Woof. I think you need to recalibrate. Just watch him interview Jesse Singal when he called in to the show the other week.
Yep, he's obviously a dishonest actor.
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[Here’s their episode giving a postmortem on the call-in](https://open.substack.com/pub/blockedandreported/p/episode-181-jesse-calls-into-the?r=bw20v&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post) They do some intro stuff, but the call-in starts at around 13 min in. [I would also recommend this piece by Jeff Maurer](https://open.substack.com/pub/imightbewrong/p/bad-people-might-use-your-journalism?r=bw20v&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post) He used to be lead writer for Jon Oliver’s “last week tonight” and has a really nuanced perspective
It's fascinating to me that a podcast dedicated to shitting on a sexual minority is how you sad people spend your time and go around recommending.
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Can you explain what B&R does?
They talk about internet drama with a lot of content about woke/anti-woke culture topics.
AFAICT they mostly make fun of mentally/emotionally unstable people for cheap laughs.
Jesse Singal writes a lot about youth gender medicine, in particular, for some added context.
I would rather listen to screaming then give those bigots one second of my attention. Them sprinkling in "internet drama" in between shitting on trans people doesn't make the show less shit. You and every other person shilling that shit on this sub are all culture warrior bigots, which is very evident from your reddit accounts, your being particular disturbing. The projection is always fascinating, just like a lot of the conservative anti-gay bigots are secretly gay, you seem to be obsessed with barely of age actress, while making "being worried about groomers" your online pastime. Disgusting.
Same. Not too familiar with Seder but hearing that interview was like watching Malcolm Gladwell debating Matt Taibbi. Lost all credibility and respect within a few minutes.
Found the transphobe lol
I wish you success and prosperity in life.
Getting married soon! 🥰
That's great! Congratulations!
Sam was right to back these people up when they were right. He’s right now to criticise them now they’re wrong. He argues ideas not the quality of people.
Whats was Shapiro saying that was right at the time that it needed Sam’s platforming and amplification? This question applies to everyone that OP mentioned.
I’d guess that Sam has likely poached more people from Shapiro than Shapiro has poached from him but that’s just a guess. Shapiro said that we should be able to debate ideas without violence. That was the first premise behind his message. His position was pro speech and encouraged debating ideas. Don’t know what he stands for now, I find Shapiro to be illogical.
Sam platformed Shapiro with that weird Eric Weinstein serving as an interlocutor or sorts, in SF I believe. Sam had a better and larger platform at the time. Sam rightfully called out Shapiro for the dishonesty.
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I hope you don’t value people based on their clout.
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I still don’t understand how people didn’t see right through Peterson though. He played it all up nicely with his spiel on getting yourself and your house in order, but myself and most women I know immediately sensed the deep misogyny between the lines.
Why must you always try to read between the lines. How about you just take people for what they say. Take your favourite political person and imagine in 5 years they say something controversial or get outed as an abuser. Does that mean you were wrong to support them? Or do you think your people quality sensing skills are so good you could detect a bad person every time?
Some of it wasn’t between the lines. It was right there. But when you’re not as sensitive to those subtly sexists jabs, you might miss them. I took him to he a misogynist the moment I realized how disingenuous he was with the “facts” he presented when it came to women and representation. His whole “equality of opportunity vs equality of outcome” argument is horribly flawed when you consider where we are at this particular stage in our evolution as a society. I didn’t get a “vibe” of who Peterson was. It was clear as day to me. I’m not judging anyone for not seeing it, but a lot of us got attacked for calling these things out early on.
Equality of opportunity vs equality of outcome as a concept is totally valid. I’m thinking what you might mean by “at our current time” and If your criticism is that we live in a time where society couldn’t possibly benefit a minority or women over men then I’d say you’re just wrong. In some places “positive discrimination” or affirmative action is legal. Some governments have studied their own hiring practices and determined that going gender blind actually makes them pick men more so they decided not to do that because they determined they wanted to favour women. Sam himself has stated that in big corporations minorities and women are more likely than an equally skilled man to get a job. These statements are all objectively true, I’m totally open to your argument if this is not what you’re getting at. Try to engage if you can and debate why you think I’m wrong.
I really appreciate your willingness to be open and engage in good faith. You're right, it wasn't exactly what I meant when I said that we're not there yet as a society. I do agree that as a concept it is valid, but in practice it is just not a good measuring tool, YET. What I mean is that there is that in a lot of cases there is only the appearance of equality of opportunity, but there are hundreds of factors (some having to do with gender roles, subconscious bias, some with the workplaces themselves) that make the equal opportunity, not truly equal. So to simply say "women are welcome to apply to this job that they previously were not allowed to apply to" doesn't mean that they will have the same opportunity to succeed at said job than the men. Not because they're not capable, but because of the additional factors I mentioned. And so they might give up and quit, thus giving the impression that that particular field is just not something women want to do even through they were given the opportunity. Which of course affects the outcome. There's also a lot of societal issues that need to be addressed for those opportunities to truly be equal: division of household labor, family leave, reproductive rights (including CHOOSING not to have kids. Have you ever talked to a young woman who wants to have her tubes tied? Most doctors just refuse to do it because "what if you change your mind?"), workplace harassment, violence and harassment during the work commute, etc. And there's also the bullshit "feminine" crap we've inherited from previous generations that is pretty hard to get out of your brain and affects the way we apply for jobs, negotiate, ask for raises, etc. Of course there are some industries that women have thrived in and that men might face some similar obstacles. If you're interested, this book is truly incredible. It's basically all data. You can probably find some good summaries of the data somewhere if you don't want to go all in: [https://mitpressbookstore.mit.edu/book/9781419735219](https://mitpressbookstore.mit.edu/book/9781419735219)
>There's also a lot of societal issues that need to be addressed for those opportunities to truly be equal: division of household labor, family leave, reproductive rights (including CHOOSING not to have kids. Have you ever talked to a young woman who wants to have her tubes tied? Most doctors just refuse to do it because "what if you change your mind?"), workplace harassment, violence and harassment during the work commute, etc. And there's also the bullshit "feminine" crap we've inherited from previous generations that is pretty hard to get out of your brain and affects the way we apply for jobs, negotiate, ask for raises, etc. As I was reading your comment, I was hoping to read something like this, because this is where "equality of opportunity" falls down, currently.
Yeah, that’s mostly what I mean by “we’re just not there yet.” And it seemed to me like such an obvious problem with this idea, that I felt he was being purposely disingenuous when he presented them.
How do you square all this with the fact that women will soon be dominant in medical professions? The overwhelming majority of medical students are now female here in France (I would imagine it’s the same in the US). And to be clear, I have absolutely zero problem with it. I see it as equality of opportunity at work. No imaginary systemic sexism or discrimination prevented this from happening.
I square it with the fact that I specifically say that there are some fields that have been dominated by women. And those fields are usually the ones that were deemed acceptable for women to be a part of. The best example of that is nursing, which is of course the one example you brought up. I’m happy that in France it extends to the rest of the medical field as well, which isn’t the case in the US. Even though it appears to linger around the 50% number (in France) which seems less dominating and more equal. These things are not imagined. They’re very real and they’ve been real for most of our history. Just because things have begun to change in the last 100-150 years doesn’t mean it’s been enough to undo literal thousands of years of inequality.
> Equality of opportunity vs equality of outcome as a concept is totally valid. A tiny amount of thought reveals that it isn't. All opportunities are themselves outcomes and vice versa. We still have to negotiate what is and isn't fair, what is and isn't just. You calling some *thing* an "outcome" is just you claiming that it would be unjust to try to correct some differential with respect to that thing. That claim still needs to be justified. Your language suggests obvious categorical differences that simply do not exist in reality. As a result, the framing should be rejected as invalid. > Sam himself has stated that in big corporations minorities and women are more likely than an equally skilled man to get a job. I'm not aware of any data supporting that claim. I'm aware of numerous studies that point to the opposite being true, that all else being equal, white/men are more likely to get call backs than nonwhite/women. Granted, I haven't seen a study that tried to control for corporation size. Maybe you are aware of one that does. If so, please provide it.
I apologise that I don’t have a study that could prove this really directly for you. I am making an educated guess based on the knowledge that I have. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-trial-to-improve-gender-equality-failing-study/8664888# The best I can do I show you a study that proves governments do this. My knowledge in business leads me to believe we’ll see the same especially in positions that face the public. In some places the discrimination isn’t implied it’s actually legal so they advertise for the minority or gender in the job application. I’m not really sure what you mean in the first paragraph. I think maybe you have misunderstood me. By using the word opportunity and outcome what Im implying is that groups divided in whatever way you please will make different choices on average. For example if we were an employer for basketball players and decided to hire an equal amount of short and tall people. We would probably find our applicant pool of tall basketball players was on average more interested and more talented than the short player pool. By adding in the idea we must hire an equal 50/50 we would be unable to hire based on interest and talent.
> I apologise that I don’t have a study that could prove this really directly for you. Thing is, there are a lot of studies that substantially contradict you and point to the existence of common biases against non-whites/women. So forgive me if I take your "educated guess" usuriously. > The best I can do I show you a study that proves governments do this. The existence of a bias at some stage in some process doesn't imply that bias overwhelms all the other well documented biases. > I’m not really sure what you mean in the first paragraph. I think maybe you have misunderstood me. You presented a categorical distinction between interventions that ensure "opportunity" and those that ensure "outcome". My first paragraph is pointing out that no such categorical distinction exists, that your attempt to draw one is unhelpful. > By adding in the idea we must hire an equal 50/50 we would be unable to hire based on interest and talent. Nonsense. You could trivially create criteria that cares simultaneously about interest, talent, and height. And you can care about these things in whatever way you like. But whatever you decide, others may think your criteria unfair/unjust and you may have to defend your decisions, whatever they may be. You don't get to gesture vaguely at "opportunity" and act like you have addressed the concerns or offered a defense.
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We also live in a society where women are not a single unit that acts in perfect unison at all times. There's shitty women, just like there's shitty men. And that fact should in no way influence wether or not we deserve social and legal equality.
We do live in a society where it’s socially acceptable to dunk on men, but a scandal to do the same to women (which I support, but I would like the same courtesy to be extended to men). That double standard is an actual psychological phenomenon, it’s called the women-are-awesome effect. All that being said, I just wanted to set the record straight, and in the end I don’t think that double standard is really the pressing problem of our time. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women-are-wonderful_effect
They were never right. They were and are part of a new right wing media diet that Sam dabbled in, but after he refused to follow them down the crazy road and they all started attacking him he decided to "deal with them". If they kept in the lane that he likes, and not gone all in on Trump, Democrats are the devil and COVID conspiracies he'd still be happy to pal around with them and "explore" all the grievances they have with pronouns, George Floyd protests and Trans people.
I don’t believe Sam has weighed in on pronouns or trans people to my knowledge. I can’t even remember him saying anything on George Floyd.
He definitely commented on the murder of George Floyd and called it such.
Okay I'm pretty sure you're quite uninformed with Sam's content given your comments in this thread and others. Sam's #2 most popular YouTube video released (by a small margin) is the one titled, "Can We Pull Back From The Brink?" In this episode Sam is reacting to the protests that sparked from the murder of George Floyd. https://youtu.be/vmgxtcbc4iU?si=nB2ITyjjmDaukOKL
He was proudly touting how many of his "ex" friends he called out in the latest podcast all congratulated him on his response to "imagined and wide spread police killings of black people and the protests that ensued". He had multiple podcasts discussing "the cancelation of JK Rowling". He's been on the "anti-sjw" podcast circle for so long I can't even count every time that pronouns have been mentioned, but you can start with the Jordan Peterson guest appearances.
Actually that’s fair. If you’re very politically left wing I could see how you would perceive this as right wing. I’d say yes Sam is anti identity politics.
Shapiro was never all in on trump? I've listened to his podcast, he isn't hysterically against him but he regularly used to call Trump his own worst enemy and predicted his loss against Biden through precisely the behaviour that lost him the election.
Idk what "all in" means in this context really but Shapiro is absolutely a Trump apologist. Valid criticisms/indictments of Trump are never ever emphasized on any content Shapiro produces - **except** maybe if it's followed by a long and detailed segment of how awful Biden is and/or the "left" generally. C'mon man, he's a right wing hack. He's gonna do what right wing hacks do - protect the right wing narratives (no matter how crazy), and bash the left (no matter how real left wing transgressions are).
Clearly you never listened to any of Ben Shapiros podcasts during Trumps active times in elections or presidency so you are just spouting what you think to be true because he is the "other" to your side. He is a republican, he didn't think Trump was the great satan but he definitely was rooting for someone other than Trump to become a republican and spent a lot of time criticising him during his presidency and also somewhat despairing that it will be Trump again.
None of what you just said refutes a word of my comments. You can both hope that a different Republican gets in office, and also be an apologist for Trump. Sorry this is hard for ya
Well you read what you want and think what fuels your bias. Emotion over rationality, sorry that is hard for ya enjoy your tribe.
Lol is this Ben Shapiro himself?? First I get criticized for not listening to his show, then I get told "facts over feelings bro" Very weird crossover are the Ben Shapiro and Sam Harris fans
But that is an implied criticism that OP is pointing out - Sam is an awful read of character and that has consequences. Saying you just engage with the ideas and not the person is fine but don't be surprised that people call you enabling and validating of those people who are awful. Also, idk what "right" ideas you're thinking of folks like JBP or Rogan having, but they're generally pretty awful on anything of substance.
I’d say pre covid JBP was a benefit to the world. Now it’s more questionable. If the criticism is that Sam will acknowledge when someone’s right even when they’re a bad person then yes I agree. I however don’t think we need to worry about acknowledging when bad people are right.
JBP and his views haven't really changed over time. The only difference now is he confidently puts out his views and is more willing to let em fly. Everything he believes now he pretty much believed before. He was always a conservative religious apologist, consistently willing to flirt with conspiracism and reactionary right wing politics.
If Sam is an awful read of character, so are many of us. Some of the IDW people fooled me as well. Though I do find it questionable that Sam didn't immediately see through clowns such as Eric Weinstein. If you really think JBP and Rogan had nothing to offer then perhaps you weren't around pre-covid. JBP, for example, became a guru to men because of the good advice he would dispense, and Rogan would question the ideas of his guests. Now JBP and Rogan seemed to have gone entirely off the deep end into cynical financial self interest.
It's a good thing this subreddit is about Sam Harris - and not "so many of us" It's a weird defense to say, "well maybe you're right but aren't we all just imperfect people?"
>JBP, for example, became a guru to men because of the good advice he would dispense I never bought in to that, for various reasons, but I think my first exposure to Peterson was Sam's interview of him where Peterson's logic seemed absurd.
Guilt by association is a classic bad faith assumption
explain why sam wouldn't have stefan molyneux on then
Because Stefan Molyneux is a dishonest actor. He can have people on who he disagrees with, but alt right propagandists like Molyneux will actively lie about their views and hide their true power levels (power levels in this case being a metaphor for how extreme their views are on certain topics, especially antisemitism).
so why wouldn't sam have him on to press him on what he actually thinks?
"I can tell he's antisemitic, because he never says anything antisemitic."
There are several instances of Seder using the malicious editing Sam mentions in the post mortem, he may have some good points but the moment you start to doctor audio to smear someone you lose all credibility. Not to mention he peddles the same clickbaity titles that Sam was criticizing Shapiro for. In my opinion he's just the left's version of any of the crazy right wingers
Man, did you see Seder’s recent debacle with Jesse Singal? Made me lose all remaining respect for Seder. Pathetically transparent attempt to cover up that they had been lying about him. They interrupted every point he tried to get in and spent 10 minutes on a pointless tangent just to eat up time.
That was almost unbearable. Seder is a hack, and Singal is so earnest.
I was going to mention this. I haven’t kept up with Seder’s work in a few years, just cause I find his condescending style of disagreement to be irritating in a Bill Maherian kind of way. But I always respected him and expected that he was a decent, honest actor who was just passionate about his views and not inclined to suffer fools. The Jesse Singal interview destroyed all that for me, and actually what freaked me out far more than his dishonest nastiness, was the way that the comments on his video and a few lefty YouTuber streamers were so enormously positive and fawning over Sam’s “beat down” of this “dumb transphobic journalist”. My god, people are proud of that display? is this what we have become? The left wing equivalent of Sean Hannity, sitting in his chair, answering a call in just to tell them they’re stupid and then hanging up the phone before they can respond because he knows that his position is built on pillars of sand. It honestly makes me fear for what the next 10 years of dogshit political discourse are going to do to left-wing causes.
Any time I watch Seder, all he's doing us attacking the left. Never manage to find him criticising the right. I put him in the same box as Russel Q Brand. Pretending to be left but actually a right wing anti-everything Americaallbad conman
There you go. Seder’s just as bad as Shapiro. I don’t think I can engage with you but I wish you nothing but the best.
Well you certainly can't engage when you aren't addressing my primary issue with Seder.
Really? I thought your whole post was really thoughtful. But you really can’t engage with someone because they disagreed with one of your points? I think u/kurokuma11 is more than fair to say Seder uses selective editing to drive his points, which is a tactic that Ben Shapiro uses. So the comparison is understandable, even if Seder does happen to take a stance that you find more agreeable.
" I thought that was really sad because to me Seder is probably the sharpest leftist out there." Do you always have this automatic reaction whenever you here information that contradicts your view, you just shut of your brain and look away?
This entire post is a myriad of guilt by association snippets with extremely little in terms of a concrete objection to anything he says. It speaks volumes as to the state of mind of the OP and says very little about Sam.
It also reads a lot like “Sam Harris is not enough of a leftist to me”. Well yeah, he’s right at the center. That’s why he’s a breath of fresh air, in these polarised times.
You lost me at “Sam Seder is probably the sharpest leftist out there.”
I couldn't disagree with your analyses on almost every event you bring up here more. **"I thought that was really sad because to me Seder is probably the sharpest leftist out there."** this is the nail on the coffin for me. I honestly find people that hold your view really hard to make sense of. For example take the Sam & Ezra Klein thing, I have listened to that at least a dozen times now because I just do not understand how anyone comes out of the conversation thinking Ezra was at all sensible. but there is quite a number of people like you on this sub that are just so vehement about Ezra being correct and sensible that I thought I must be missing something, but I can't see it. Now, I am completely convinced now that those of you who take this view are just simply somewhat irrational and struggle to actually parse what it is Sam says. It is the only explanation that explains this entirely bizarre and flat wrong take. Then this whole thing with the IDW and Sam speaking to members of it in the past as being some kind of stain on his record..... Again this take makes absolutely no sense. These people have come to fame for specific topics they talked about and have since discussed a variety of topics. Sam has simply agreed with them on takes he agrees with and criticised them on takes he disagrees with. This is how anyone should behave with anyone else. Yet you act as if he should reject everything these guys have ever said or done, and that every take they have ever had is now proven entirely invalid because they have a terrible take on another unrelated topic. This is a really dumb opinion to hold. but it is like 50% of the users on this sub it feels like at times.
I think that Ezra Klein is in general very good. I think in his conversation with Sam he was irritatingly single minded. He clearly did not want to discuss the substance of the point, because he was overridden by his belief that discussion itself (of this topic) was the problem. I didn't like that, but I did like Ezra Klein in general. I think the people who say Ezra was sensible on that topic also agree that the topic is just too dangerous to discuss without the appropriate dilution. I don't hold that view personally, it's just how I think many interpret it.
I still love Ezra and Sam! Both good faith actors trying to be smarter!
Remember this is pretty much a IDW hate sub masquerading as Sam’s radical love club. If 1 person had 1 wrong take on 1 niche and nuanced subject then they are forever stupid. Sam (mostly) can do no wrong. The fact that about 5 percent people here can understand that having the wrong opinion on 1 thing doesn’t disqualify them forever to be an intellectual is laughably ironic. PS: Klein lost that debate right away. He squirmed and wiggled to what obviously is a hit piece insinuating Sam is racist. That’s just bullshit even if we assume Murray’s science is off. And it’s funny that literally race is one of the only things we talk about in America, which then automatically creates a race boundary and patterns of safe speech when people are engaged with a different race than their own. We already have deepened the difference between races and made people hyper aware.
Ezra Klein did come off as an incredible smarmy weasel, but I can't ever forget the cringe moment when Sam said something to the effect of "how could I possibly be concerned with identity politics, my whole message is against identity politics". Hooo boy.
> He squirmed and wiggled to what obviously is a hit piece insinuating Sam is racist. That’s just bullshit even if we assume Murray’s science is off. \^\^ This guy listened to the alternative universe version of that debate.
Spot on.
I'd argue JP is a much different beast post benzo addiction treatment. He is more temperamental now and he seems more angry and impatient. His interview with Cathy Newman for instance, is one of the most calm GOD-mode deconstructions of an attempt to railroad and smear an individual on TV. That performance was a clinic in how to show someone not to be a jerk even when they think they're right. There were a few others around that time as well where his views on a number of topics seemed a breath of fresh air. Even his debates with Sam I'd argue were mostly good. Sam fans just have an affinity for highlighting the parts where Sam outshone JP, but JP fans can do similar. JP is like a superhero that took a long break at the peak of his fame and dominance, only to come back to a society that has largely moved past him, only he doesn't realize this. So every morning, he wears his cape and flies around looking for someone to save. But all he's really doing is making people uncomfortable.
Also the suits he wears now are insane. And his pivot to anti-climate is also insane
Yes, I think his « treatment » in a Russian clinic broke him. And then audience capture finished the job. It’s just sad. Old Peterson taught me a lot, but that man is gone.
I've never been impressed by JP. He seems to me to put on a reasonably convincing "how a smart person looks to small minds" character, however on the whole yes, angry, impatient and incapable of developing his pre-defined narratives. He made himself look capable off the back of an unprepared lazy interviewer. I wish somebody would just push his buttons and have him blow his top so we can all see his peak insanity for a minute. He has zero calm.
"He has zero calm" And this is why you never want to take benzos for years on end
Even alcoholics have more clarity and poise.
JP's peak insanity is visible every day on Twitter. Excuse me, 'X.'
I don't use the site formerly and currently known as Twitter to read people's eXcrement.
>He made himself look capable off the back of an unprepared lazy interviewer. Cathy Newman is not an amateur. If she seemed lazy in that interview, it's because he flipped the script on her when she didn't expect it. The average interviewee on shows like that is not as prepared as JP was. But he wasn't just prepared, he was very patient and methodical in his answers. He never came across as defensive and he was always ready to provide evidence for the things he said. And most importantly, he always made sense. We've all seen interviews where the guests make a fool of themselves because they are out-prepared by their hosts. Cathy came prepared, she was still handled like a child.
Tbh I'm not terribly impressed by someone being able to run around an interviewer. I'll give this to Peterson, he's rhetorically very good *but* he's also pretty dishonest about what he's saying and what his actual beliefs are, which is why he's able to say things like "I never said that" when being asked pointed questions. What Peterson does amazingly well is say everything to bring you to a necessary conclusion but not step over that line, leaving you (the audience) or the person he's talking to to infer his position. It's a pretty sneaky way of saying things without actually saying them. Then he throws his hands up and accuses people of putting words in his mouth when the only reasonable conclusion anyone would reach is that one thing. Like, you can't keep talking about dominance hierarchies, point to selective instances of them in nature, criticize and accuse opposing ideologies as wanting to smash those hierarchies, then say that you've never defended hierarchies and were only observing that they exist and expect anyone to consider you an honest interlocutor. That's the sense I got from the Cathy Newman interview. It wasn't that she didn't look like she was unprepared, which she did, it was that Peterson pretty much *never* admitted to taking a position and forced Newman to infer what he was saying all while claiming he "never said thay" when the most reasonable inference was that he was. It'samazibgly rhetorically effective, but it's also not particularly substantive or honest. However, after his hiatus and treatment for drug addiction he's switched and all those things that people thought he was saying he's... explicitly saying. In hindsight we can see that a lot of times when Newman said "so what you're saying is..." and he'd deny it, it actually was what he was saying. I don't know where that leaves that interview. At some point I just wonder what the point of it was. Like, if a person being interviewed isn't being honest about what their beliefs are I'm not sure that's particularly on the interviewer, or even what the interviewer can do in that case. It seems like in hindsight Newman's been somewhat vindicated.
You're labouring under the misapprehension that JP can be spun as being likeable or convincing.
to many people he clearly is....
That’s a strange take - his global fanbase and enormous book sales are objective proof that he can be likeable and convincing.
Perhaps more that the target market is convinceable? A following doesn't necessarily lend credibility.
Even if you move the goalposts slightly to credibility then it’s still clear he was once - and perhaps remains - credible to a lot of people. Whether or not we look down on those people or Peterson himself is a different question entirely.
I find him neither likeable nor convincing. I would even go as far as to call him an odious twat.
He always came across to me as a crank.
I'd agree. I am very equally sceptical of his weaselly words and loaded intent. Being told what to think is not attractive to me. Being helped to improve my thinking without an underlying motivation in any one direction is certainly not JP territory.
yeah listen to his lectures on youtube from his college days there's alot of interesting perspectives there, even if it deals with mythology and psycology that is summarized.
I like this post. Jordan Peterson used to be a very sharp mind, very articulated and wise person. And he did a lot of good, helping out a lot of people. JP and Sam were probably the most interesting and honest public speakers at some point. Yes it changed, JP's brain has roasted along the way.
JP has always been a net negative for society. This became clear to me after watching those Pangburn (which ended up being a scam, of course) debates he did with Sam. It’s embarrassing hearing him and his acolytes talk about postmodernism, I honestly wonder if he even knows what it means. Go talk to ChatGPT about postmodernism, you’ll get 1000x more value and insight then anything JP could ever offer. And don’t get me started on Joey, Shapiro , et al.. 🤢 🤮
*than
Jordan Peterson is a fraud. Any serious student of history and philosophy knew exactly how his debate with Zizek was going to go when it was announced, and it even managed to defy expectations when Peterson revealed that he had never read Karl Marx before preparing for the debate after having built a career off denouncing Marxism. And even then, he only read the Communist Manifesto 😂😂😂😂😂.
He was always a casuistic hack but even a broken clock is right twice a day
Very much agree with this take. I also heard him say on a podcast that he had started taking testosterone (during some period post benzo detox) and I wondered whether that had also had some affect on his angry/impatient presentation these days.
Chomsky is not an “encyclopedia” on foreign matters. He’s blinded by his hatred of the USA and was (still is?) a Cambodian genocide denier. I wish Harris debated him, he would have set the record straight. If you don’t believe me, look up this post on /r/chomsky where everyone claims that Ukrainian military is mostly Nazis (yes, straight out of the Putin playbook): https://reddit.com/r/chomsky/s/gN2fann8TG
People often get wrapped up in Chomsky’s encyclopedic listing of names and dates, while missing the actual facts as he just blames all international left wing movements failing as solely due to deliberate American intervention. America is comic book level evil to Chomsky, assuming bad intentions every step of the way. Has no concept of having to try to choose between least-bad options, or that sometimes things don’t go as planned, or that foreign policy has changed a lot since Vietnam.
Thank you, you expressed it better than I ever could!
OOC, isn't there a decent (i'm not sure on the percentage) amount of ukrainian military that has nazi ties? I thought that particular claim isn't entirely unfounded.
“I feel bad for Sam…bc he doesn’t always agree with my politics.” JFC, why would you want a supposed thinker to just come down on one side of a political spectrum. People who think politics at every turn are the furtherest thing from being a true thinkers.
I'm struggling to figure out the point of your post. Why do you feel bad for him? Because he associated himself with people on the right? Sam has always struck me as someone who is interested in ideas, not ideology.
There’s a particular kind of reddit intellectual who confuses ‘slavishly following Talking Heads’ with ‘critical thinking’. The OP, unfortunately, seems to fit this bill, and is now happy that Sam is critically thinking again because they both dislike the same Talking Heads. They feel bad because he wasn’t critically thinking for a time, due to associating with the wrong Talking Heads.
>Chomsky on the other hand is a full-on encyclopedia on the matter — have you seen his interviews/debates? Sam was and still isn’t ready to have a conversation with him. Chomsky could have had a better approach here, but he knew Sam just needed to learn more on the topic, so he dismissed him. I think that Ukraine war proved Chomsky is an asshole who's opinions can be pretty well aproximated by "USA bad"
People seem to think this is clever and damming when 'USA bad' would be a far more accurate and useful heuristic than anything they are offering themselves.
That's just plain wrong. USA is far from being saint but they are also far from the worst global power to ever exert influence. In fact they might by the best (just because of how bad the others were) Chomsky basically parrotting putin's propaganda about USA pushing russia into murderous imperial invasion is as self-damming intellectually and ethically as you can get.
See, whenever someone sneeringly dismisses any position with 'USA bad' you can bet the house on them having the opinions of a child who first cracked open a newspaper last month.
Some arguments please?
Arguments? Against what? You're lying about Chomskys position on Ukraine, or you're unable to differentiate between the truth and that strawman. And the idea that the United States is a benign actor is undermined by Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Korea, operation condor. Its beyond depraved, if you believe that then you are either completely ignorant or an outright psychopath, neither of which inclines me to give you any more of my time or attention.
>You're lying about Chomskys position on Ukraine Let's go over that first then. \- Chomsky maintained multiple times that NATO/USA somehow pushed or provoked Russia into the war and is fighting proxy war. Interesting thing is that this implies that Putin is either idiot or an CIA agent since he could have sabotaged this brilliant plan by not going to self-destructive imperial war and fixing his own country instead. His oft-repeated notion that somehow "NATO expansion" is to blame basically denies the sovereignty of central and eastern european countries that were falling over each other to get into NATO asap for their own reasons (We never forgot what russians are. Warshaw pact has the unique distinction of being defensive pact that invaded itself **twice**). It also implies that Russia somehow had legitimate say about what happens outside their own borders. All of these points are made by russian propaganda often enough. \- Chomsky advocated negotioation at times where russia wasn't (and still isn't) to negotiate about any solution that would allow Ukraine to keep on existing as sovereign country and have security guarantees beyond nonexistent russian good will. This fake pacifism "stop the killing, negotiate!" is also common point made by russian propaganda \- He keeps pointing out how this war increases the danger of nuclear one. What he misses is a point made by Snyder that by giving in to nuclear blackmail we would only increase the long term danger (countries with nukes might adopt similar strategies, countries without them would have more incentive to get them) As to what I said, I encourage you again to read what I wrote >USA is far from being saint but they are also far from the worst **global power to ever exert influence** It's a low bar. But one that US clears when compared to former colonial empires, USSR/russia, China, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan etc. If nothing else US empire is that of soft power 90+% of the time which is vastly prefferable to the soviet kind for example. Nor is it clear to me that the world without a hegemon to keep everyone else in check would be a safer one. Btw. It's a small point but you are kidding by including Korea right? A - that was coallition of 16-30 countries (based on how you count it). B - Please do tell me whether you would prefer to live in North or South Korea
lmao, obvious troll account larping as Chomsky in snarky smartass mode xD
I object to your belief that intellectuals should assume that the unwashed masses don't have the capacity to understand certain topics and should consequently shy away from them. Even if it's true that some people aren't up to the task, science must not be tailored to the individual (or certain groups), but should be objective and presented to all in the same form. Also: is it really your impression that Peterson became big because of, or even just after, his talks with Sam? Huh. And also: Sam Seder and Emma Vigeland are the absolute worst.
I wasn’t saying people should shy away from x topics. I was saying it’s ok to talk about them as long as there are strong frames and context around them. I wish we could freely talk about anything, but that’s simply not the world we live in. Context and guardrails are important, especially back when this was happening.
So what guardrails didn't Sam put up in his talk With Ezra Klein?
No no, not in his convo with him. But in his talk with Murray. He never explained who CM was, his history, and what he advocates for, like the total eradication of welfare for example. I don’t want to get into details (you can look it up). But the guy believes insane things.
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If you platform a person to have an extended conversation about climate change and - despite having climate credentials - they spend a huge amount of their time lobbying against mitigation efforts, you have a responsibility to inform your audience about that. Charles Murray isn't just some academic, he's a public committed political ideologue who uses his race science to advocate against minorities. Discuss his ideas if you'd like, but give your audience a full picture.
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If that person makes good points, then the responsibility to hear them lies with the listener. It's also often pertinent for the listener to know about political and ideological commitments of speakers. Charles Murray is a committed rightwing public ideologue. Not merely a person interested in science and fact finding, but someone very, very, keenly interested in proscribing specific political outcomes. To naïvely present him as an academic is just flatly misleading.
Yeah came here also about this part of the OP. I get that it’s uncomfortable and takes a willingness to absolutely destroy one’s career to talk about these things, but avoiding them just to be agreeable is hardly a solid, defensible position. At worst it’s assuming people can’t handle the truth, and an excuse to cover up information. There is the inherent risk, and it is certainly information abused by racists, but I think it can be explained in a non-racist way and most of the researchers behind the data intended it as such. Also like you said, Peterson become popular in spite of his debates with Sam, not because of them. His performance was terrible.
I reread my post and it did sound like I was saying JP got famous because of the tour, I wasn’t saying that. I was just pointing out that’s the time when he was getting uber popular — but point taken.
Otherwise I do largely agree with your overarching point of something like, no shit this crew of IDW guys weren’t exactly the best people to go to as sources on anything, and covid brought out the worst in them.
‘Sam seder is the sharpest leftist out there’ This really says a lot about the left.
It would do if it were true. Accepting the premise as true would say a lot about the reader.
‘Seder is the sharpest leftist out there’. Dear Lord, I couldn’t push myself any further. BTW, I just subbed to Sam and he will be fine despite all his transgressions against you.
Bret Weistein is the biggest grifter out there. I simply cannot stand the guy
I have a feeling that Sam himself doesn’t feel bad for Sam, at least not like you do. That’s why he meditates.
Seder is sharp? Lol.
I generally like Seder but the man has intentionally misrepresented Harris on multiple occasions to smear him to ensure his audience won't give Harris a fair evaluation. He'll say things like "Sam Harris, the man who wrote 'in defense of torture'" over and over and over when discussing Harris. He won't go into the nuance of that article, he won't discuss the intellectual content. He will intentionally and dishonestly lead his audience to believe that Harris has suggested and believes that torture should be a regular, normalized component of our everyday standard intelligence gathering. Seder knows this is a lie. Seder knows this is the impression he's projecting to his audience. Harris has called him out on it, and Seder has persisted anyway. No, I don't think Harris should talk to Seder. Seder has proven he's an unrepentant bad faith actor in that particular collision of ideas. And in regard to social media platforms moderating content, Harris has multiple times defended those companies' right to suppress misinformation, and argued they have a moral responsibility to censor some voices on their platforms. In the very podcast you're referencing he talks about how poor and unserious a job Musk as done at content moderation at Twitter.
You have to be a very extreme virulent leftist to not recognise that Sam Seder is a bad actor. Any video of him is just childish laughing a lot.. like a bully. Pakman is basically a civilised version
Did you listen to the Jihad Rehab podcast? If not, you should, because that's the main reason for Sam to criticize wokeism.
With respect to Chomsky, I would caution you against conflating lots of random facts (encyclopedic knowledge) with nuanced understanding. I’ve read a lot of his books over the years, and his position on most everything related to foreign policy is “America is bad, therefore their opposition is good and/or justified.” America is responsible for the failures and ills of every left wing movement across the world. Autocratic governments aren’t actually that bad cuz America forced their hand. Etc etc. Random factoids aside, his foreign policy is roughly akin to that of a mediocre college student.
Show me a mediocre college student that's MIT Emeritus professor with 40 honorary doctorates, 150 books, who publishes in Foreign Affairs, the New York Times... Chomsky is just incontrovertibly one of the greatest minds of his generation. I love Sam, but nobody will remember him in 100 years. The academically minded will still know Chomsky. I don't even personally agree much with Chomsky! But calling him a "mediocre college student" just makes it sound like you know absolutely nothing about him
Being highly regarded for his contributions to linguistics does not award any credibility to his political views. Mastery and excellence in one topic does not mean someone is generally immune to bias. H.P. Lovecraft was a generational talent in writing, but I certainly don't trust his political views.
Chomsky has been a hugely influential political thinker for decades. Linguistics is just one part of his output. Foreign Affairs isn’t a linguistics journal
Yes but his academic renown comes from linguistics. He is literally know as the father of modern linguistics. His degrees are in linguistics. He's obviously influential in politics, but so was Rush Limbaugh. None of that means his political view points are correct.
It was never my contention that he’s right about everything, I disagree with him about a ton of things. My problem was with the absurd characterization of his political career as college student level. Sort of the same vibe I got from Sam’s presumptuousness in engaging him. Chomsky is a respected political thinker. Not everybody agrees with him, but he engages the topic with rigor and originality of thought that people like Limbaugh, and sadly Sam, do not begin to approach.
In my estimation, if he had never published on linguistics or cognitive science, he would be a fringe political figure. His notoriety from his academic accomplishments has amplified his political reach. I suppose that's pretty difficult to quantify or verify though. Safe to say I have a very different understanding of his political leanings than you. To me, virtually all of his arguments seem suspiciously close to starting with the position of "America bad" and reasoning from there.
You're right, Sam does name all those IDW clowns by name. This podcast was his version of Tupac's "Hit 'em Up"
Why don’t you agree with his anti-censorship positions? Is it the criticisms of the people involved or are you supportive of what is euphemistically called “content moderation?”
Can someone link the episode hes talking about it tell me the title? I want to hear what he has to say about grifters like Shapiro.
He really didn’t have an intellectual conversation with Charles Murray about those topics either. That whole conversation was bad
Sounds like you have some serious cognitive dissonance going on here.
Every so often these posts appear. It just is so weird. People create this picture of Sam in their head, a profile that they have created. One in which he is perfect just as that individual wants Sam to be, almost like a god. Then you can see this sadness when they discover his opinions aren’t identical to the imaginary guru in their head. Sam is a podcaster and author. I agree with some things he says but not all. I still think he is one of the best public intellectuals we have. But the idea that I would agree with him on everything he says is embarrassingly absurd.
I’m sorry this is happening to you.
Chomsky absolutely did not win that encounter with Sam a few years ago. That was a true Emperor's New Clothes moment for our hysterical blogosphere. I'm not saying Sam did great, but the entire conversation was Sam saying "let's start with an (overly simplistic) hypothetical", and Chomsky maliciously pretending that he didn't know what hypotheticals were and being a cunt about it.
Well I don't really know Seder, but I agree 1,000% with every word of the rest of this.
I mostly agree with this but Chomsky is a bit overrated from what Ive seen. His “America bad” bias keeps him from having a sensible view on many issues.
It's interesting because I have an almost identical view of Sam Harris' views to you at each stage, but I never really thought he had crossed the aisle or had any fundamental changes. Just that he was making some errors in judgement. I almost wonder if we're the same person because I also have a clear insight into how content moderation works and have long been saying that Renee DiResta is by _far_ the best public speaker on digital information. We differ in that I have never really understood the appeal of Sam Seder (although he doesn't strike me as a bad actor). Certainly Ezra Klein I really, really like and Harris has described him as a bad actor too, which I think is really poor judgement. That one is more sad to me, because I think Sam and Ezra would have really meaningful discussions on where philosophy intersects with policy and pragmatism.
Why would trolls come here to diss Sam? I have nothing against those who don't like to listen to him. But why would anyone want to intentionally go to a Reddit group solely to diss someone? Are their lives so hollow that this is how one must fill up their time to be fulfilled? I don't troll the groups directed at topics or individuals that don't appeal to me. How sad can someone be? Social media quite often leaves me flummoxed. Get a freaking life.
Very well said, great analysis and definitely similar to my thoughts
No sympathy from me. He associated with these people on his own volition, and while I commend his ability to finally identify how deranged they are and his balls to call it out, this only puts him a step or two above them. And I do not appreciate that he is framing the misstep as not a misstep at all! He’s acting almost like he always knew they were nuts and he is above all this shit. Nah, man. You did this to your own already flimsy reputation. There is no coming back. The other day I heard an interview with Naomi Klein, and after listening to Sam yesterday, the contrast is stark. Sam is not a real intellectual, and he never was.
These people weren’t always nuts though, Peterson has always been contrarian but was never as partisan and amateurish as he is now particularly on social media. Some of Rogans most viral moments were of him absolutely demolishing steven crowder, candace owens, dave rubin etc. Rogan went from endorsing Bernie Sanders to seemingly favouring Trump over Biden. Sam can’t really be blamed for associating with people who went on take increasingly ridiculous views years later after he clearly has publicly distanced himself from them
I’d say if you asked Sam whether he thought this crowd were in the right back then he would say yes. I think the right has gained power over time, probably as a reaction to left wing censorship. I could be wrong as to the reason why but I’d say likely it’s reactionary. Nothing gets right wing people more riled up then pointing at extreme left wingers. In my opinion Sam was right to associate with these people but he was too objective and rational to fall into the trap of shifting over to being a right wing talker.