Do you like him, /his/?
I have only listened to interviews with him and he seems on point, though a lot of people seem to hate him. He also seems to be shat on a lot for his philosophy thoughts.
>>903353
As an insight meditation teacher, reading Waking Up by Sam Harris was simultaneously joyful and shameful. It is a fine book that points to a weakness in the culture of awakening that is hard to look at directly. In his usual style, he is honest to the point of painful, and sometimes it can be hard to take.
Let me back up.
For those who don’t know Harris, he is a neuroscientist who became most well known for publishing The End of Faith, a book promoting the idea that what we believe influences how we behave, and that faith-based beliefs lead to rather irrational behavior. Like flying planes into buildings. He’s dry, technical, but funny and obviously not afraid of controversy. Apparently people really like that combination, because The End of Faith stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for over 30 weeks. Harris quickly moved from obscure neuroscientist to intellectual sensation, and was lumped in with Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett as the leading edge of a revitalized post-9/11 atheist movement described as “new atheism.” Together they were ironically dubbed the “four horsemen.”
But Harris is an odd fit among the horsemen. While Hitchens, Dennett, and Dawkins all rail against the privileged position that eastern spirituality seems to have among western intellectuals, Harris openly disagrees with them, making the case that despite the woo-woo clearly at work in the offerings of Deepak Chopra, The Secret, and similar new age flim-flam, there is something valuable to be found in the spiritual traditions of Asia that is being obscured, rather than revealed, by pop spirituality. He uses his public platform to urge people to dig a little deeper.
>>903365
It turns out he is speaking from experience. Waking Up is not just an introduction to Buddhist meditation and the liberation that it leads to, it is a spiritual memoir told from the perspective of a consummate rationalist and skeptic. One who stumbles upon enlightenment.
After a few chapters of fleshing out why some spiritual practices are fruitful human endeavors and others are not, and correlating the claims of mystics with modern neuroscience, Harris gets down to the memoir part of his book and dishes on his own experiences. I was thrilled to read that Harris begins his spiritual search in U Pandita’s meditation center, where he practices a rigorous form of insight meditation. Harris is told that he is working through the progress of insight toward “cessation,” and will attain his first taste of awakening upon that strange moment of non-occurrence. For readers of my site, or fans of insight meditation, this should all sound very familiar.
When I read this part of the book I was rooting for Harris, excited to hear what he makes of the shift in consciousness that occurs after cessation. I looked at how many pages were left and anticipated that there would be a detailed account of how he reconciled his own encounter with nibbana with cutting edge brain science. This, I thought, is the book I’ve been waiting for.
So imagine my disappointment, shock really, when on the same page he reports that he couldn’t do it, and gave up.
No cessation. No stream entry. Zilch.
Something, I thought, went horribly wrong.
>>903368
It is not exactly clear from the book what happened. In retrospect he reasons that moving toward a goal (cessation) did not feel like the right path to enlightenment, and that truth can be glimpsed no matter where one is on the path, and truth is not found in a state, cessation is not necessary and… his explanation started to feel fishy as I read it. Frankly, this sounds like a rationalization after the fact. Indeed, it sounds identical to what he was taught by the teachers and traditions that he encountered after he left Pandita’s center (Advaita and Dzogchen). So what was he really thinking and feeling at the time he threw in the towel?
A hint can be found in his description of the wall he hit during a year-long retreat:
“But cessation never arrived. Given my gradualist views at that point, this became very frustrating. Most of my time on retreat was extremely pleasant but it seemed to me that I’d merely been given the tools by which to contemplate the evidence of my non-enlightenment. My practice had become a vigil. A method of waiting, however patiently, for a future reward.”
Harris is describing an insight practice that has stalled out in one of the stages along the progress of insight. In another passage he points out that his movement through the progress of insight wasn’t very clear and although he had many interesting experiences he did not know if he was making any progress at all. Why didn’t he know?
What concerns me most about this is that Harris does not describe what would have been the best, most natural, and sensible antidote for his struggle: someone simply telling him where he was on the path and what to do to move on. I wonder what kind of book Waking Up would be if someone had simply taken him aside at that time and said “hey, relax, you are in lower equanimity. It goes on for a while and can sometimes feel uneventful. Here’s what you can do about it…”
>>903371
>71
Insight meditation, as a culture, is often one of information-restriction rather than transparency. A nascent movement, pragmatic dharma, has emerged largely in reaction to this, but it is still in its infancy and does not have much of a voice in mainstream meditation centers and media outlets (yet). The most traditional approaches still hold the biggest sway, and they are usually hierarchical, with the teacher knowing the details of the insight stages and which one the student is currently developing. The student’s role is to follow the instructions faithfully and not become too wrapped up in where they are on the path and when the cessation will come. There are many reasons why this approach developed, and many of them are very good reasons. But I don’t think these reasons work anymore, and Harris’s case is an example of why we can no longer afford to have an approach to insight meditation modeled on the norms of pre-modern hierarchical culture. It just doesn’t work very well. A few hundred years ago Harris may have stuck it out, not because it was a special time full of special people, but because his options would have been limited. In today’s world, he simply had better choices and felt empowered to pursue them. The important point is that Harris wasn’t failing as a meditator, he was most likely in a state of information-hunger about what was happening in his own mind. He deserved to know more. And as insight meditation grows and establishes itself in the west, we need to keep in mind that we can do a lot better than this.
>>903373
I would recommend Harris’s book for a number of reasons. The skeptical approach to awakening, denuded of the dogma and superstition, is wonderful. It’s as if a portal into the future opened up and the reader can see what an approach to awakening will look like when we move beyond religion. The presence of neuroscience in a book about awakening is nothing new, but it is rarely presented so soberly and carefully (although the caution led to a lack of integration with the rest of the book). And finally, it is clear that Harris knows what awakening is from direct experience, and can discuss it as a field of human endeavor every bit as legitimate and practical as any art or science.
The book is a high wire act in a sense, where he balances between the assumptions of secular materialists on one hand and religious ideologues on the other. He invites each to see something in their direct experience that fails to fit into any dogma, and he does so with an understanding of both positions that is refreshing. I’m often frustrated with authors who are so intoxicated by spirituality that they’ve lost their mental footing and have succumbed to a kind of cognitive free fall, but equally odious are authors so rigidly skeptical that they refuse to look at the miracle of their own consciousness. Harris successfully creates an island in the gulf between the two perspectives. Hopefully, it will grow as others follow suit.
trust fund babby who wants people to like him
He's a prick and I don't like him. But I can't really disagree with anything he says or his rationale.
I dislike his pseudo-utilitarianism, reductivist, dogma-centric """"""""""""""""""""""""""ethics"""""""""""""""""""""""""""
He seems on point in interviews, as very few people he debates (i.e. people who already agree with him, and the overly-religious) have much learning in the areas of what they think is an obsolete field.
>>903353
I think he is smarter and more successful and relevant than all the people insulting him on /his/.
Only familiar with his public appearances and some podcasts, but haven't read his books. I find him to be of a really one-track mind as of late.
>muh islam
Not that I don't agree with him on it, it's just boring.
>>903437
you're the type to drink the magical kool-aid on a farm in Guyana
>>903457
You are the type to shit on people better than you on a taiwaneese cooking forum.
>>903437
hey sam
>>903353
Zoolander and Dodgeball were both very funny.
>>903353
Robert Downey Jr. advised him not to go full retard
>>903353
Didn't care much for 2lander
>>903375
Very interesting, I've been starting on the path of buddhist meditation myself and have also found it hard to know if I'm experiencing what is described by teachers.
About Harris, outside of his areas of expertise I find him shockingly naive, without any awareness of his naivity. For example, he boils down the war on terror to "We're the good guys and we're bombing terrorists for purely moral reasons". That's not a hyperbole, listen to his interviews on the subject.
I haven't read "End of Faith" yet, but I enjoyed "Free Will" and his book with Maajid Nawaz "Islam, and the future of tolerance". His podcast is good too if you ignore his latest battles with Islam apologists, who are incapable of having a nuanced discussion. His shows with Douglass Murray, Micheal Weiss, Paul Bloom, and Jocko Willink are all excellent.
>>907001
there are materials here
>>>/r9k/27412203
![noam_chomsky3-620x412[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/FjXhkpa.jpg "noam_chomsky3-620x412[1].jpg")
>>903353
Sam "Cucked by Chomsky" Harris
My knee-jerk instinct as a Christian is to burn him at the stake, but I have tried to actually engage some with his ideas. I STILL don't like him. Even from an atheistic perspective he seems shallow and worn-out.
Someone on /lit/ once said that he is essentially Nietzsche's Last Man. I feel like that's not inaccurate.
>>903353
he basicaly advocates objective morality
and its based on the notion of eliminating suffering
its supposed to be objective cauze science
and then he proposes a ethics based on it, which involves some rather convoluted stuff
this just doesnt lay well with most people who think about it for more than 30 seconds
I remember watching one of his talks and I found him to be a huge user of strawman and it annoyed the fuck out of me
I think he was making an argument against biblical literalism even though it's a concept that was popularized by the fundamentalists in the fucking early 1900s. Not even St. Augustine took Genesis literally. Not even the original Protestant reformers took the bible literally.
I'm more annoyed that the expectations and what he delivered in the Moral Landscape wasn't compatible.
You're getting told by his fanboys that he have found a way to use science to derive ethics. Really interesting stuff. Then you realize he's just an utilitarian.
Has contributed less than nothing to the lettered world.
>>907584
>My knee-jerk instinct as a Christian is to burn him at the stake
Nice try /r/atheism
>>907682
Anon you started with the wrong one
>>907649
all new atheists use strawmen as much as they can
othervise they would have to face a complex multifaceted reality in which their onedimensional views dont work
>>907682
>>907688
Both of you fools didn't post the best one
>>907692
To be fair, this goes for new Christians as well.
>>907693
>lol religion
Every time
>>907700
yes but you expect that of them, or at least you dont expect any better
but coming from people who are supposed to be neuroscientists, intelectuals and such it seems a little off
personaly i find it strange how they can just simplify complex issues down to naive elegant solutions, totaly disconected, and keep a straight face
they also seem to be a rather close knited group, like almost the way you can trace a subculture back to some bar where 3 guys started a thing
>>903428
>""""""""""""""""""""""""""ethics"""""""""""""""""""""""""""
this desu
Sam "Science can answer moral questions" Harris
>>903353
Yes I do agree with him on most subjects, and I think he is far more reasonable than Reza Aslam or TYT.
>>903365
>because The End of Faith stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for over 30 weeks. >Harris quickly moved from obscure neuroscientist to intellectual sensation
>The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason (2004) is a book by Sam Harris
>He received a Ph.D. degree in cognitive neuroscience in 2009 from the University of California, Los Angeles
>Eleven years later, in 1997, he returned to Stanford, completing a B.A. degree in philosophy in 2000.
He was NOT a neuroscientist, intellectual, philosopher or had any relevant credentials when writing The End of Faith.
At most he was a Bachelor in Philosophy.
>>907843
>Implying any credibility to TYT.
Choose an actual intellectual to compare Harris with.
>>904747
kek
>>907571
I'm very curious to know what you're talking about.
>>907693
How DOES Harris answer Hume? His morality is even more vulnerable to the fat Scot than Christianity's.
>>907888
As far as I know he doesn't.
>>907795
>
They aren't strawmen in any way
>>907892
>also they blow stuff up, we really should just attack them and destroy them
>religion didn't invent anything
>there's never been a state that outlawed religion
>>907887
http://www.alternet.org/belief/sam-harris-made-himself-look-idiot-email-exchange-chomsky-and-has-shared-it-world
Not the guy you're talking to, but there you go.
Watch for the end, when Harris sheepishly tries to magic a victory out of his ass by claiming that things would have gone differently if they were face to face.
>>908100
Damn, he really does come off badly there.
Despite being a "free thinker" he seems totally unwilling to consider other viewpoints. He's used the same line about intentions for years to justify anything bad the USA does, and when seriously challenged on it here he ends the conversations.
Why would he even publish that?
>>907584
>he is essentially Nietzsche's Last Man.
Not even a Nietzsche-fag, but nope.jpg
>>908100
The way Harris approached Chomsky on this was just obnoxious. i regret that I read that whole exchange. Harris had only one point. That we should consider terrorists morally bad for the violence they commit because they have bad intentions. But the United States should not be considered morally bad for the violence we commit because we have good intentions. That was it. Within the first email exchange Chomsky acknowledges his point, talks about whether we should be judging countries using the moral standards we apply to people, points out that the worst destruction is not caused by evil intent but when people in power simply do not care about the consequences and gives real world examples.
Then Harris just does not let it go, he keeps on with the same fucking point over and over for the whole exchange. Harris is a smug little fuckmuppet. He's not even in the same league as a guy like Dawkins, much less Chomsky. Why the fuck do people take this guy seriously?
>>908198
>Why the fuck do people take this guy seriously?
Because he says religion is stupid
>>908100
>mfw
>>908204
Literally this
>>908100
His exchange with Glen Greenwald is also a great experience of Sam Harris magic.
https://www.samharris.org/blog/item/dear-fellow-liberal2
>>908198
>Why the fuck do people take this guy seriously?
Because he has a simple, aggressive inner logic with which he attacks religion.
Simple, easy to remember rhetoric.
And if you haven't noticed, a lot of new atheists nowadays aren't exactly the brightest bunch.
>>908204
>>908213
>>908219
So the defense I've heard most often for Harris is that while his blog and politics aren't great his book The End of Faith was really good. I have not read the book but I'm reading the synopsis on wiki. Says it opens with a story about a suicide bomber killing people because of religion and calls for an end to tolerating irrational religious thought because they creates violence. We're the good people, we must stand up to the violent irrational others!
Am I missing anything here. His book sounds like its the same tosh he spouts now.
>>908242
He quotes his book in the Chomsky emails and sums up his moral position in said quote, with the response to Chomsky's retort honestly
>>908100
"As a culture, we have clearly outgrown our tolerance for the deliberate torture and murder of innocents. We would do well to realize that much of the world has not." - Harris
>>903456
it goes like this
>harris: Islam is shit (protip: it is)
>twitter: racist! bigot!
>hattir: okay, I'll explain it again...
>>908198
>The way Harris approached Chomsky on this was just obnoxious. i regret that I read that whole exchange. Harris had only one point. That we should consider terrorists morally bad for the violence they commit because they have bad intentions.
I don't even think that point is defensible.
>>903353
He has the face of a born psychopathic killer. I like him.
>>908342
>academia and left-wing bs
whaaaats the differreeeence
>>903417
i like your intellectual honesty.
I don't agree with you on him being a prick
He can be a bit tryhard, but Heavyweights and Zoolander were GOAT.
I knew Sam Harris in high school. He used to wear weird clothing. A hoodie when it was hot outside and these oversized fucking "tourist" running shoes. They were so big on his feet that the front portion of each shoe would go slightly limp when it came off the ground, as he walked. His haircut was weird as well. It was extremely short on top, but actually quite long on the sides in comparison.
Anyway, he was a lot more arrogant back then. He was "that guy" who would always think out loud and yell "skeptical" commentary about whatever the teacher was lecturing us about. All with this really smug fucking smirk on his face. One time the teacher asked him why he didn't study and he replied that she "will eat those words when I'm a leading scientist at MIT."
Another time he came into the classroom talking really loudly to the teacher. She didn't know what he was on about so she just kind of nodded. Some kid next to me said "what a fucking weirdo" and Sam's face went all red and he just began to stare at the upper left hand corner of the classroom.
>>909619
That kid's name? Albert Einstein
>>908429
How so?
>>909594
kekd
>>909619
reminds me of the scooby pasta about him trying to shoplift
>>909823
Well, let's take the terrorists state goal at face value:
They wish to achieve a society governed by rational principles derived from the absolute word of God, the creator of the world, the absolute source of knowledge and goodness. At the same time, they will create the most just society in 1400 years, and ensure the most possible people achieve eternal paradise (Harris's own ethics would indicate that one person achieving eternal paradise would be worth any amount of worldly suffering).
This isn't just me being kind on Islam either. The Nazis, the Klan, the Soviet Union, the IJA, the British Empire, etc. etc. all of them were armed with "Good Intentions." To suggest someone can't have good intentions when they crash a plane into a building, is a failure of imagination.
That's a commonality to all ideologies. Harris's argument amounts to ideologically motivated violence is preferable to pragmatically motivated violence.
>>910933
>To suggest someone can't have good intentions when they crash a plane into a building, is a failure of imagination.
I'm pretty sure that an Islamist knows that murder is "wrong", he just makes an exception when it comes to infidels(because his book says so).
And tbqh, the analogy with the Nazis, the Klan, the Soviet Union et.al, doesn't stand either, because they also know that murder is wrong just as much, they just make exceptions when it comes to Jews, niggers or "bourgeoisie".
>>910803
*Rippetoe buying a gallon of whole milk
>>910953
Similarly, the American knows that murder is "wrong" he just makes an exception when it comes to terrorists, Serbs, German Babies, gommies, etc. (because his ideology says so).
If we're going to apply that standard of qualifying intentions, then no, we can't say Americans and their allies have good intentions.
>>903365
Ben Stiller or Sam Harris? Can you tell the difference?
>>903353
That picture of Sam Harris always looks like a mugshot to me.
>>903365
And rational thought leads to ideas like eugenics which is a really rational belief. Also the idea of genociding inferior races. Pretty rational conclusions.
>>910953
His point being that these terrorists view their enemies as a cancer. And how do you kill cancer? Chemo, radiation, in some cases, nuking bone marrow and hoping that the transfusion doesn't reject. Basically: violence.
And that's really the crux of it all, just like Jews, niggers or "bourgeoisie" to the Nazis, the Klan, and the Soviet Union, they view this "cancer" as something that will inevitably kill the body, and that has to be expunged, even if acceptable harm needs to be done in the first place.
Not that I agree with the middle east in general about anything, but it doesn't help that 1st world countries, like America, have been slinking around in middle eastern lands like jackals and sucking up what resources they could for dirt cheap. But that's the way of empires, I guess.
When all is said and done, I just take a faux-evolutionary stance on this, glass the desert, they lose, we win and, once again, the victor writes history.
>>913938
all arguments for eugenics and certain races being inferior are based on pseudoscience. actually genocide is irrational even if certain races are in fact "inferior" because that would greatly lower our genetic diversity which makes it easier for us to be wiped out by environmental changes and diseases.
>>914590
>all arguments for eugenics and certain races being inferior are based on pseudoscience.
They are absolutely not.
In fact, eugenics is practised today, and it is legal.
>actually genocide is irrational even if certain races are in fact "inferior" because that would greatly lower our genetic diversity which makes it easier for us to be wiped out by environmental changes and diseases.
This isn't true either.
Destroying competition to secure access to ressources is entirely rational.
The (attempted) biological argument that other races somehow have some magical diversity is utterly unfounded.
Even if all races except one disappeared, there still would not be a bottleneck.
On the other hand, if the surviving race were aboriginals, civilization would be utterly fucked.
>>914590
>all arguments for eugenics and certain races being inferior are based on pseudoscience.
whether a race is inferior or superior is really a philosophical question, ultimately all races are adapted to their respective environments and therefore are "superior" at surviving in these different environments. There is a good deal of evidence that there are psychological differences between races that affect their level of criminality and their economic attainment. Committing genocide against races that tend to perform worse in modern societies is not rational because it isn't. Where is the threshold of underachievement for the elimination of these races? Why must this genocide be divided along racial lines rather than just below a level of economic performance? Why must we judge one race by the standards of another? Why are the interests of the "superior" race more important than that of the "inferior" race? Racial differences could be used to justify separation but not elimination.
>>903353
No.
>>908100
>>908289
I think they both came across quite badly in this exchange.
Harris seemed a little too hung up on a single point regarding terrorism and Noam Chomsky came off as standoffish and closed minded.
With that said, I do believe Harris got the better of him, instead of addressing Harris' point regarding the intrinsic immorality of crashing a plane into a building Chomsky deflects with a point about how the USA neglects to investigate its own atrocities.
Harris' point is not to defend America's actions it's to call attention to a dangerous ideology.
>>913938
You're right we should just be irrational then. Thanks.
Why do I believe wine and crackers turn to flesh and blood despite common sense and contrary empirical evidence? Because rationality leads to eugenics dumbass
>>915186
But Chomsky's point, when all is said and done, is the same damn thing: we ARE a dangerous ideology. It's doesn't matter if a glorious empire creates great and lasting works or manages a stable peace because, at the end of they day, they're made from the ruination of weaker people.
I think his problem is that, while Harris is calling out an ideology that kills the innocent and then uses it's own civilians as shields, America is basically jury rigging something that's all too similar. America can go where it likes and do what it wants, not in the name of allah, or even ideology itself, but in the name of Pax Americana. And that any resistance against this will inevitably lead to innocent people dying.
It's the same thing with Rome, the barbarians never wanted a bunch of foreigners, however much Rome might have synchronized religions, to rule over them. And the result is that the barbarians didn't merely defeat Rome's military grasp (attempted or otherwise) upon them, but that they also sacked Rome, which leads to the death of innocents.
TL;DR: The point Chomsky is trying to get across, if I understand him, is that America has "allahu akbared" way more than the muslims, in recent years. It's just a speed difference of slow fine dining vs mcdonalds fast.
I think people should stop moralizing and just kick the shit out of dirty little countries that won't do what we say, but I'm a pessimist about politics.
>>916449
Same guy, but I'm kinda slow and it just occurred to me, the difference between Harris and Chomsky is that Harris is calling out criminal behavior from ordinary civilians while Chomsky is condemning undue police brutality (we are the world police after all).
They might not really be all that opposed to each other, if they just call out violent bullshit on both sides.
>>913938
yeah eugenics is the attempt by losers to impose their ideas on others, once they cling to their ideas.
this people take what they think so seriously that they cannot stand that life is not what they want to
>>916467
I think Chomsky rejects that there are any police. He sees two gangs nigging and nogging, except one nignog has Abram's tanks.
