Sam being a Zionist - This Is the first time in my life I find myself with serious doubts about what Sam is saying.

They are not Civilians!!!!!! They are just non-official terrorists. The only civilians are the ones who haven´t been indoctrinated into hating jews and they´re a really ridiculous tiny number.

Bro I lost 2 subscriptions over the years with you and you cut this conversation off at a horrible time. Finish at least part of the question before you end it. Why am I even listening to this anymore.

Sam Harris - lead detective of the Thought Police 😂

Lol typical jew, only worried about antisemitism. What about "muh identity politics bad"? When blacks complained their grievances were not real, but antisemitism is supposedly the worst thing ever. This guy is a total fraud and a pseudointellectual. Everything Nassim Taleb said about him is correct.

Talk a little slower wise guy

Blind spot bias on Israel vs Palestine is Sam's intellectual K-hole.

Sam has gone politically correct for the antisemitism meme

🕊️🛐🙏🕎🔥

Haven't listened yet and am making the call now. He advocates for censorship and makes an anti-free speech argument. At the eleventh hour with Israel's mask-off, slaughter bonanza with all Palestinians. I used to think this man was smart, but if I can predict him like this he can't be too clever. He may as well be a FOX news pundit now.

The worst thing Israel has done is not fighting the counter narrative better😂😂😂 at min 36:40 Completely unserious analysis

Awesome!

Question: You are a Hamas fighter or Palestinian about to take part in October 7th. Think about how silly and absurd it is and impractical from a male perspective to stop in the middle of an adrenaline pumping event where you know the IDF is surely on the way and you will be in mortal danger, think how implausible it is to stop in the midst of that event to get some ass on the battlefield. I get it they are the most evil peole ever or as Sam says worse than Nazis, but give me a break !!! Now the hostages back in Gaza that's a different story if I am being fair.

Your technology implementation is apparently flawed. I had to listen to your 'warning' about why I was hearing your warning, and I am a subscriber. Now if I need to pay you more money to get to be a member, then fuggetabowtit.

We desperately need credible institutions in part to provide "base truth layer" where they have already meticulously checked and verified all of their public statements, so anyone except for experts in the field may just take their word for it. If we fight over every claim there's no place left to productive life and everyone will have very narrow and incomplete knowledge. Endless skepticism is impossible. But govt can't provide them by a fiat and we can't just give this benefit to obviously corrupt failed institutions. Either they have to be first constructed anew or reclaimed, only then over time they can accumulate this prestige. Meanwhile, a maelstrom of free speech is preferable to giving the corrupt power to shut up the skeptic and beat society into compliance to a crooked "truth regime".

Everybody should hear this. One of the most clear sighted, objective and sensible discussions about the Gaza war on the entire internet. Thank you to Sam Harris for making this available to everyone. A genuine public service in a time of turmoil and mental/moral chaos.

I agree with everything you said. What do you think about the Nakba and The present day expulsion and pre 10/7 destruction of Gazan homes by Israeli settlers? What should secularists do to protect their homes? I agree Certainly not the barbarism of 10/7. But what should they do?

This is very interesting topic for me cause I live in Brazil (perhaps one of the only countries in the world with a similar diversified "cultural" sphere as the united states, perhaps even more),but we are much less "free-speech" oriented than USA, to the point that some people literally fled from Brazil to the USA cause they were Free-speech quasi-absolutist (in Brazil you cant say you think a nazi party should have the right to exist for example). But man, are we suffering cause of the lack of fake news control over here. People did a worse version of the January 6 United States Capitol attack cause of fake news which some would argue were just different opinions. People started beliving covid wasnt real and started dying back in the day. Heck, this month we had some massive floods over here and because of some bizarre conspiracy theory that our food and water donations were going to the gov we stopped sending people aid. What is worse is that this was mostly started and ended in twitter, instagram but we cant control it, I wont say it would be better if there was some kind of control, the data for my country specifically is not big enough, but I am not sure if there is a universally right or wrong approach to the question. Like, what works in USA would be disatrous here and vice versa

I haven't listened to Sam Harris in quite some time, and now I know why. I'd love to be able to call him dishonest here, but it appears he's just so biased as to be totally ignorant. Just great...

Sam appears to be more concerned with harm done from bad faith actors than he is of censorship. Personally, I'd rather not chuck out the bad so as to decrease the odds of mistakenly discarding the worthy (who ever gets to define it ...). Nothing has changed in that sunshine is still the best (although, not perfect) approach to dealing with disagreeable speech. Show why the speech is wrong, bad, egregious, ... let's not censor it.

I can't believe Sam is still arguing against free speech given that his friendlies on the left could turn a different shade tomorrow and ban his website from their servers for misinformation about Muslims. Or his bank could de-bank him. You're going to need to walk a fine line of political correctness to operate in the environment Sam advocates for, where some group of people decides what is and isn't misinformation.

The "reliable expert" challenge has 2 aspects, one is being able to "translate" between different points of view, the other is being able to say intelligent things about a particular subject. And there aren't enough translators currently.

Egypt needs money support from the world to help them take back those of Egyptian origin to house the Gazans in the Sinai permanently and then Israel would be a Jewish country again.

Surprised Sam just seems to posit abstract, neutral, perfectly informed arbiters who will "check" misinformation. Meanwhile, here in reality, the list of abusive, power hungry idiots who actually assume such powers is long and tedious.

Bottom up thinking is common with autism spectrum disorder. It seems most of Sam’s guests use this type of thinking. Greg even admits to it. Top down processing is equally if not more important in solving problems. I’m not sure these rigid, robotic bottom up thinkers should be trusted. They tend to be libertarians, and self serving. We shouldn’t ask a character like Dr. Spock from Star Trek, as a fictional example to solve sociological problems. Many things require a big picture understanding, rather than a unnecessarily tedious and detailed process.

This guy makes next to no sense. Here we are talking about censorship which two men apparently agree on but at the same time there is zero "conspiracy" to shut people up. This guy should throw his degree in the trash.

This is a very good episode, I think it's become pretty clear to me, as to what's going on in terms of a slight difference btw Sam's approach to this subject matter, as slightly differentiated from that of ppl probably like both Greg and myself. These two approaches aren't particularly at odds in any way, just starting from a somewhat different set of considerations: Sam seems mainly focused on how audiences and groups, especially LARGE ones in society, will be influenced by information. It's not good or bad, just an appropriate characterization, to say that this set of considerations bears resemblance to that of a politician for example, (or a public intellectual who manages to be widely successful across a range of media, lol). I won't exactly equate my approach to media and info with Greg's, but speaking for myself, I have almost zero concern with diving into narrow, little-frequented areas of media, that might be inappropriate, biased, misleading, but contain either an interesting sociological perspective indicative of the workings of a subset of the population, or sometimes actually contain surprisingly useful info that will not be available elsewhere. Again, Sam wouldn't say that someone like me shouldn't be free to search the web (as an adult) and access ALL kinds of legal content, as I so wish. (Actually, one of my few disagreements with Sam involves a case in which he WOULD want to restrict me in such a way, at the risk of belaboring the point this involves Covid, and the expediency with which restrictive martial law should be effectively declared, I maintain that he's moderately misaligned on this point, and Claire Lehmann is perhaps maximally misaligned). He's rly talking mostly abt norms. He thinks ppl should have certain kinds of sensibilities, reflected at the height of MAINSTREAM discourse, in a way that's maintained via the marketplace, editorial decisions made by privately owned companies, policies set by individuals who own platforms, etc. Is social media now equated with the public sphere? Well of course, literally/legally, no. But figuratively, and implicitly? That depends on how both citizens and company owners DECIDE to treat the platforms. Clearly my own sensibility is not so neatly shaped within the parameters of the mainstream zeitgeist. However, does that mean that my eclectic and idiosyncratic palate should be maximally amplified in the public discourse? The answer is, that actually depends on consumer demand, popular sentiment, and on what kinds of products/content are made available by large companies. Personally, I usually think meta-trolls are hilarious. But when it's the president? When it's our leading industrialist (Elon) who's trwling on our biggest platform for lolz? Sure, I can obviously see how this is potentially corrosive to civil discourse. But again, here's where Sam and I might slightly differ: what should happen next? It sounds from this episode like we'd agree more than I necessarily realized, but my answer is that until existing laws are broken, it's the market that decides what happens next. And it's normative culture. How are norms shaped? It's an interesting question, suffice it to say I'm convinced it generally involves incremental evolution over centuries rather than decades, at least when getting down to socionormative bedrock. So, will the market select against Elon's newish Frankenstein platform, wherein shifting company policies are determined by a combination of the First Amendment, and whatever mood memelord Musk is in on a given day? Sry Sam, I'm not exactly thrilled abt the mess this potentially creates, but the answer is determined by whatever a critical mass of platform users decide, and how many or few ultimately decide to take their business elsewhere. Are they captured by an algorithm? Has our mainstream culture completely degenerated? I obviously hope not, yet I also can't exactly say that I think an Elon-type disruptor shaking up the major social media space is 100% bad. But either way (as Greg essentially argues) you and I and everyone will continually be made aware of the state of our culture, as marketplace dynamics and disruptive public conversations continue to play out, in our free liberal society.

Is Apartheid one of those "western values" you treasure - Sam?

Sam Harris celebrates that Alex Jones was buried out in the digital desert. That's not sociopath speak.

What are Sam's political credentials, again?

Sam goes from taking a shot at MTG to advocating for canceling people. Sophisticated guy, but one foot in the ultra far-left.

Look at all these “free speech” pro-Hamas losers who think violence and inciting violence are protected by the Constitution. Harris is still the foremost mind of his generation. Your minds, however, are rotting to the core.

Isl*mophobia is simply realizing the ugly reality of isl*m.

One problem is that so many people apparently can not distinguish between opinion and fact.

I have an issue right at the start. While I understand that your experience is in speech the law that says this private institution can't censore runs counter to the private schools policies on religion. If government can tell the private school what they can and can't do about speech, then they can also set rules for religion in a private school as well, correct? If your thinking that's it's true your logic is constant but I think we both agree that doesnt happen for practicing religion.

I'm a big fan, but it's all well and good for Americans to champion American principles of free speech when the tidal wave of censorship and puritanism on the European left in recent decades has been a more or less wholesale import from the States... The rest I enjoyed though.

You don't even need a conspiracy theory for government censorship on social media. Everyone sees this already.

Sam is no friend to free speech

The subject of censorship basically boils down to “how much poison can a system handle before it becomes inoperable?” People who hold the absolutist point of view mistakenly think that Western Democracy is impervious to poison or abuse. There are limits and whenever there are limits there are going to be people who disagree.

19:39 to 24:11 - A good argument in favor of free speech.

Sam's comparison of social media to a restaurant that fires an employee or blacklists a customer is quite flawed. The purpose of a restaurant is to serve food, the purpose of a social media platform is to enable people to speak to each other. A social media platform that's too restrictive with speech is doomed - unless the government forces all social media platforms to conform to a certain standard of what is and isn't allowed, in which case, there won't be any competition, and everything will just suck. People want to be able to speak freely. As long as a service offers that, and isn't being artificially restricted by the powers that be, like what goes on in China, it will always win. Also, Sam's info on 4 and 8chan is a little bit outdated - they're not particularly free platforms anymore.

This conversation needs to be repeated again and again due to its importance

These institutions have taught racism against white people. That is all they see if white =oppressor and blk/non white is oppressed. These ppl who follow this teaching and teach children this hatred are criminals to societies. This is the Obama Legacy.

It’s interesting to hear Sam’s elaborate, thoroughly thought through arguments against the left, e.g. cancel culture and moral confusion as he calls it and then compare it to short and superficial arguments against what he calls the right. Is he terrified of the fact that he has found himself on the right? He seems to be inventing ways to fake distance himself from his new rural and white ideological centre. Almost every meticulously constructed anti-left argument has that little obligatory appendix „the right of centre“ with an audible scoffing in his voice.

You are quite literally the voice of reason 🙏

Sam greatly over simplified the Waco incident there . Yes the government was way over the top but shady stuff ( and illegal) was going on.

He brings up a very important point, the difference between free speech and disinformation. Disinformation renders us ungovernable, I have pondered this often. Because the average person doesn’t know what the truth is anymore, especially in the US where education is in a sorrowful condition. It leads to apathy and nihilism, and the horrendous polarization we are living with. Identifying what is disinformation is key, discerning the kernels of truth from which conspiracy theories spring, is key. For example, the truth is the US has done some awful things that betrayed the public trust (Tuskegee syphillis experiment, WMD didn’t exist in Iraq, mk ultra) but that doesn’t mean lizard people rule the earth.

Is Sam still pro censorship?