Sam Harris does Silly Metaphysics (Video Exclusive)
Added 2024-07-23 00:19:44 +0000 UTCCultic knowledge structures are everywhere, including in super-rational-atheist Sam Harris' superficial empiricism.
Comments
Mass esoterica, that's a perfect way to describe the society of hysteria we find ourselves in
Christopher Paul Bettridge
2024-12-06 22:20:00 +0000 UTCIf the good life is the avoidance of traumatic experiences, but you are largely powerless to do so, then active truth aversion is the good life, which is what we all do anyway
Alex B
2024-08-03 19:02:07 +0000 UTCTo take a tech/pharmaceutical development method as absolute truth, you can see how humans, nature and context are erased from progress narratives and transhumanism.
Alex B
2024-08-03 19:00:58 +0000 UTCLoved this! Hope there’s more where this came from :)
Whatsacriticaltheory
2024-07-28 01:21:22 +0000 UTCReporting back on my exploration of Durkheim’s book on religion. I’ve read the first ‘book’ and I’m most struck by his theory of knowledge. I think it’s a brilliant move to work with Kant but make the categories have a social origin. It led to me further researching sociology of knowledge, but I’m not convinced it won’t run into relativism.
Jack
2024-07-28 01:02:14 +0000 UTCLol Right? Apropos nothing, a wild torrent of how Muslims are subhuman barbarians, and then calmly back on his previous train of thought
Plastic Pills
2024-07-27 16:53:18 +0000 UTCI really agree with you but I’m trying to get a grasp on how to apply Durkheim to stuff so I took a shot in the dark lol
Jack
2024-07-27 14:52:19 +0000 UTCIt’s got elements of it, but I wouldn’t call all of it religious in the sense you’re describing. The teleological stuff yes, but the commodity fetishism, labour abstraction, alienation… the latter 3 are objective conditions of the mode of production that are demonstrable.
anacidcommie
2024-07-27 08:39:55 +0000 UTCNot cringe at all. Welcome aboard, brother. 😁
anacidcommie
2024-07-27 08:36:27 +0000 UTCAnti-dialectical brain rot
anacidcommie
2024-07-27 08:34:16 +0000 UTCCouldn’t help but notice how he just added “fascism” as almost an afterthought after mentioning communism, almost like that whole centrism thing is just the flimsiest of veneers. Also, it’s funny how he can’t let go Islamophobia, his first love, even after all these years. The OG Harris cash cow. But nope, he’s definitely not pandering to any audience and definitely pursuing The Objective Truth™️. The irony is that when you consider the covert racism and general ignorance on display, the difference between his and Trumpist ideology is a matter of degree, not kind.
anacidcommie
2024-07-27 08:33:16 +0000 UTCBrilliant, can’t get enough of this semiotic critique tbh. Sam’s like “you have an ideology that captures everything, and with top down control over individual behavior and you try to make an economy run on these rails, you try to make a political system conform” bruh you’ve just described capital. Also imagine saying “there’s no private property in Russia” and thinking you’re an enlightened intellectual lmao
anacidcommie
2024-07-27 08:28:35 +0000 UTC"Pills destroys Sam Harris!" just kidding. YT really has gotten so bad.
Khemith
2024-07-27 08:25:09 +0000 UTCOk now let me geek out on your production. I don't know if this was intentional, but the colors of your room and the in the debate video vibed pretty well.
Khemith
2024-07-27 08:21:40 +0000 UTCSam Harris says that people are abusing the values of the West to undermine it. This feeling this concept is at the heart of the Barry Goldwater, Sun belt reaction in America. This feeling by true believing liberals that their values make them weak. That the unworthy (Because the market place has said they are unworthy) is the source of the decay. Sam Harris represents this fusion of capitalist logic with the self. Finally becoming the "Body without Organs" of Qanon where you fuse with the spectacle. (which Sam Harris dislikes because he hasn't done the transformation yet). Reaction seems to be baked into being a liberal, you never really believe in liberalism as a strong force of good.
Khemith
2024-07-27 08:20:31 +0000 UTCMarxism is a religion and it has belief in sacred objects like socially average labor-power, exchange value, false consciousness, commodity fetish, etc. It also has rites like… I’m lost on this one like it depends on the type of Marxism ig. Maybe the DoTP is a rite if the church gets that far but it generally doesn’t.
Jack
2024-07-26 04:57:56 +0000 UTCThe religion of liberalism has belief in sacred objects like human rights, separation of powers, representation democracy, etc. It also has rites (religious actions) like voting. The worst thing to happen would be if the profane (conservative liberals?) touched the sacred objects but it’s not a bad thing if the sacred intervenes and takes rights away to prevent terrorism.
Jack
2024-07-26 04:53:12 +0000 UTCI love how all this truth talk, integrity talk comes from a guy who wrote a shit book on morality without reading much moral philosophy or literature
Matt S
2024-07-25 13:53:07 +0000 UTCThe lack of self awareness is high comedy. The epitome of irony
Matt S
2024-07-25 13:29:53 +0000 UTCTruly awesome, can't wait for more!
Matt S
2024-07-25 12:56:04 +0000 UTCIt is so interesting that Harris is so much of a positivist without accepting it. He thinks that good morals (whatever those are) lead to human flourishing and that the news exists to report the truth. Then he observes that this seems untrue but instead of changing his theory, he accuses everyone to be stupid or that the society is basically broken. He does bad philosophy without recognizing it thus he does what he accuses others do. It is so ironic. My suggestion: read some books.
Dalia
2024-07-25 06:35:53 +0000 UTCOMG Durkheim answered both of my questions and more in just the first chapter smh
Jack
2024-07-25 04:15:44 +0000 UTCIs this a different route to a similar conclusion as the physicalist that mental events can’t be causes? Another thing is that it seems not all language is produced by rituals depending on how we define ritual.
Jack
2024-07-24 04:43:36 +0000 UTCYou got it, and it's profoundly significant if you could hypothesize a nascent sense of the symbolic existing prior to language. While I am skeptical you could prove causation either way, it might be that rituals produces language in the first instance, rather than the other way round. If there is even a chance that that is the case, it would be impossible to evaluate thought as anything but an impossible accident that has somehow worked itself out into becoming a universe.
Plastic Pills
2024-07-24 03:23:42 +0000 UTCChris Hedges has an interesting summary of his debate with Harris from years ago at the height of the latter’s “new atheist” fame. He wrote about it in a short, punchy book inspired by the exchange (along with his debate with Hitchens around the same time). It would be nice to get ahold of a full transcript. Hedges sees Harris and his rationalist acolytes as Kurtz-like figures so busy getting high on their own supply then don’t realize the monstrous implications of their blinkered and culturally self-serving worldview.
Jonny Blade
2024-07-24 02:45:36 +0000 UTCIt would be interesting if you continue to build up a library of these diagrams to compare and contrast these positions visually.
Jack
2024-07-23 21:06:48 +0000 UTCI think this video would get a lot of traction if you posted it to YouTube. Would also love to be able to share it with some friends.
Andy Louie
2024-07-23 19:15:52 +0000 UTCLove this. Learning about Marxism / dialectical materialism, as well as watching videos by Pills and CCK Philosophy cured me of being an apolitical rational centrist Sam Harris-type. Pills makes a great point that Sam Harris and folks like him seem smart compared to who they are competing with in the media space, but once you have a more informed view of the wider intellectual landscape, it become apparent how lacking and unrigorous their ideas are. Apologies if this comment is cringe or masturbatory.
Andy Louie
2024-07-23 15:22:36 +0000 UTCSo I’m thinking about the values in relation to the method of knowing and wondering what comes first? In the Durkheim it seems like the values come first and then what we think truth is or how to get to it is already boxed in by that.
Jack
2024-07-23 08:34:05 +0000 UTC"it's the system that is in want for self-correction" - Maybe unrelated but I was thinking about this when it comes to communism as well. Criticism of communism as it's own failure, not also a failure of capitalism may be treating it as an externality like ufo's showed up one day and made countries try a communism.
Qoheleth
2024-07-23 03:55:30 +0000 UTCPills vs Harris 2025 debate. we want to see it haha
Qoheleth
2024-07-23 03:46:47 +0000 UTC
